


All Imperfect Things

by sayhitoforever



Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, Eventual Romance, Humor, M/M, Slow Burn, Violence, canon typical levels of poor decision making, discussions of PTSD and survivors guilt, except everybody's laughtose intolerant, god there's going to be so much angst, i'm winging this, lots of blood and violence, mildly canon compliant, that i hope pays off, they're all idiots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:27:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 78,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22193272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayhitoforever/pseuds/sayhitoforever
Summary: When you fight the war and win, how are you supposed to be grateful to have survived when the things that matter didn't?In which Ichigo learns the price of victory, what it means to live in peacetime, and that there is always a price to pay for resurrection.
Relationships: Grimmjow Jaegerjaques/Kurosaki Ichigo
Comments: 337
Kudos: 558





	1. In Your Heart Shall Burn

**Author's Note:**

> Set post-blood war, and I completely pretend like the epilogue doesn't exist, because that's the way it should be.
> 
> I accept love in all forms, but comments fuel my writer's fire, so do with that information what you will.
> 
> Many thanks to J for letting me bother her endlessly and at all hours.

_**~**  
  
_

_“if I never see you again_   
_I will always carry you_   
_inside_   
_outside_

_on my fingertips_   
_and at brain edges_   
_and in centers_   
_centers_   
_of what I am of_   
_what remains.”_

Charles Bukowski, **_Living on Luck  
  
_**

**~**   
  


_Cannon fodder,_ he thought miserably. _Cannon fodder for Kurosaki fuckin’ Ichigo._

Grimmjow drew in a shuddering breath, one still-clawed hand curled around his midsection in a desperate attempt to repress the pain, before retching blood onto the stone. There was a pool growing beneath him, seeping and spreading in the beautifully macabre way that only blood could. Around him, the purple shroud of the sternritter’s final trap was collapsing, quivering and folding in, in, in on itself, shrinking with every agonizing second.

It wasn’t as though he hadn’t known what he was signing up for. Death, that was what Urahara Kisuke had pitched him upon revealing what the plan of attack was, his tone too jovial, his eyes too serious. The Wandenreich, some usurping Quincy asshat who wanted to play god in the worst way. He’d complied willingly, knowing that his agreement, his contract with the shifty Shinigami, would get him closer to Kurosaki, closer to making good on that promise. A promise that felt like it had been made lifetimes ago, by different people somehow. A promise of blood and pain and a good goddamned fight, all of which he’d received, none of which had come from the person he’d wanted it to.

But now, fucking _now_ , as he was vomiting blood and wondering if it was possible to feel one’s bones splintering apart, now all he wanted was a nap. And to gouge Kurosaki Ichigo’s eyes from his stupid, shit-for-brains skull and eat them. Somehow, he didn’t think that his current predicament fell under any of his agreed upon, contractual obligations. He wanted to feel used, to feel exploited, tricked into giving up more than he was ever going to gain, but no one had held him at swordpoint to be where he was now. It had seemed cut-and-dry in his head; Kurosaki’s enemy, Kurosaki’s begrudging and very temporary ally who might owe Grimmjow a favor if everything worked out the way it was supposed to. But this was unforgivable, insulting, to be done in by the same mouthy Quincy twice. So insulting in fact that Grimmjow might just tell Kurosaki’s corpse all about it while he picked his teeth clean with the asshole’s bones when he got out.

If he got out.

The Quincy’s last attack was all but rending the flesh from his bones. He felt like he had been flayed, peeled apart until all of him was screaming with agony, with death. The fatigue it brought with it was setting in fast, pulling at his eyelids, making the arm he was holding himself up with wobble. The collapsed body and feeble thrum of Urahara and his reiryoku wavered at the edge of Grimmjow’s field of vision, his bankai still slumped almost mournfully over top of him. They’d prepared for this, had tried to prepare for everything, but Grimmjow could feel his own energy leaking out of him like a sieve, eaten up by the poison he was breathing.

He could sense Nelliel’s reiatsu, flickering on the edge of his consciousness, a bright tang of citrus in the back of his throat that broke through the iron taste of his own poisoned blood. Poison, of all the bullshit things. Not even a true wound he could bleed out from. Grimmjow lifted his head, vision blurred and tunneled, diminishing, and watched as Nel gathered Urahara’s body in her slim arms and disappeared from sight. She must have found the hole that had been cut open for him, small enough to slither through, just enough time to put his cold hand into a warm chest. Grimmjow hung his head again, chin tucked to his chest as he spat blood. Nel came and went twice more, ferrying the Shinigami bodies out from the collapsing death trap as fast as she could.

Something discordant and awful ripped through him for a moment, hung in the air heavy like a sandstorm. It rang inside him, nausea bringing another torrent of blood up and past his lips. Just as swiftly as it had come, it was gone, the feeling of utter dread. And when Nel’s arm slid around his back, grip deceivingly strong as she hauled Grimmjow to his feet, he couldn’t even muster the energy to snarl at the assistance. There was the lightest of tremors in her grasp that told him she had felt it too, whatever it had been. Sonido carried them back into the clear air, back into the dreadful stillness of the smoldering remains of the Soul Palace.

“Grimmjow, something is very wrong,” Nel said in his ear as they landed. She lowered him slowly, gently, to the ground. Body convulsing, he fell to his knees, a hand shooting out on instinct to catch himself. The air free of poison wasn’t making him feel better though, in fact it was making everything worse. With his free hand, Grimmjow shoved her aside roughly, and vomited again, choking on the blood as it emptied out of him.

“Grimmjow,” Nel said again, voice tight with concern, her hands gripping his shoulder as he doubled over in agony. “You’re worse than the others, what did you do?”

He gasped for breath, insides roiling, body rioting as he squeezed his eyes shut against the pain. Reiatsu shimmered around them as his release form fell away, unable to maintain it, and his zanpakuto clanged against the stone beside him. Dry heaving, he opened his eyes long enough to see Nel reaching for his crimson-caked arm, still red to his elbow, the one he was propping himself up with even though it and the rest of his body was shaking like a leaf in a gale storm. 

“Don’t,” he hissed in warning, wishing he had the strength to pull away from her. “Not my blood,” he managed to choke out. Her fingers hovered just above the dried stain before drawing away sharply.

“You killed him.”

“No shit,” he spat, feeling his elbow start to give under the pressure of holding himself up.

“I’m going to find someone to heal you, stay here.” She was gone without another word.

There was no one around them except for the crumpled bodies of the three Shinigami he’d fought beside, but Grimmjow could feel others at the edges of his senses. They were gathering, drawn toward each other’s energy, trying to find survivors, to huddle into the same space and regroup.

Unwilling to follow her directive, Grimmjow pushed himself back onto his haunches, the nausea abating a little as he did so. He tipped his head back, eyes sliding closed, as he drew in ragged breaths, each one hurting more than the one before. Bad, it was real bad. He couldn’t stop shaking, muscles spasming. He opened his eyes, took in the clear blue of the sky above him, so blue it almost hurt, the sight of it and the smoldering remains on his periphery making everything left of him feel raw. Blindly, he groped for the hilt of Pantera, a sense of calm steeling into him as he wrapped his trembling fingers around her familiar woven grip. He tucked his booted feet under him, trying for balance as he waited for strength.

Gritting his teeth so hard his jaw hurt, Grimmjow surged to his feet, what little blood he had left rushing from his head as he stood, his vision clouding over in a shower of static. He could hear voices, quiet at first, murmuring between themselves, could feel the rise and fall of reiatsu as wounds were tended to. But the cacophony of their voices swelled into a chorus of shouts and Grimmjow forced his eyes open again.

And there he was, a blaze of stupidly orange hair, some of it matted to his neck and face with blood, looking haggard and haunted and so fucking relieved. They had all felt it, even Grimmjow had from inside the dumb death ball, the shake and shiver of the world, of the universe itself. Frayed to mere string at its edges, held together by nothing more than the resolve of that ginger spiritual abomination — who looked worse than Grimmjow felt— and his friends. Seeing him there, in the swarm of black, shihakusho clad Shinigami, something loosened in Grimmjow’s chest that he hadn’t realized had been there. Everybody’s golden boy was alive, and they were victorious, and for that brief moment, that was all that mattered.

Enough. It was enough.

Sword clutched loosely in one hand, bloodied fingers hooked at the air as Grimmjow exerted what little energy he had left to tear a Garganta into the space behind him. A maw of inky blackness ripped open, yawning wide with the promise of dark, sunless skies and emptiness. Somewhere quiet to crawl away to. No one was going to notice if he made the void only wide enough to slip through. They were all distracted, it was a perfect escape.

“Grimmjow!” Nel’s voice cut across the distance, sharp with alarm and shock.

He met her grey eyes briefly, caught sight of the woman that flanked her, eyes wide, short grey hair slicked to her neck with sweat, the shihakusho and haori unmistakable. Grimmjow looked at Nel and hoped, for once, what she saw there would convey what he meant. There was no saving him, there was no healing him, no Shinigami or Vizard or Arrancar or fucking Quincy was going to heal him. All that Urahara had done to heal him had been undone the moment he’d plunged his hand into that irritating sternritter’s chest. This was borrowed time now and if he was to die, it wasn’t going to be surrounded by a bunch of Shinigami.

But it was Kurosaki's eyes, brown like freshly turned earth, wreathed in shadows that hadn’t been there when they’d all split up, that found him last, drawn to him by Nel’s outcry. Found him and widened in dawning realization as the Garganta expanded further behind him, gaping and black. The distance between them was immeasurable, uncrossable with everyone swarming closer to Kurosaki, too much like that death ball the way they were closing in. So Grimmjow grinned, feral and broken, blood smeared down his chin, down his neck, into the black of his clothes, teeth sharp, blue eyes focused on Kurosaki's stupid face. And he let himself tip, rocking back on his heels until he lost his balance, to fall into the space between the worlds. Kurosaki's panicked gaze as he pushed people aside in a scramble to get closer was the last Grimmjow saw of the Soul Palace.

**~**

Ichigo shouldered Hanataro out of the way, the prickle of healing kido barely grazing his skin, dread like ice water filling his chest as he moved, unable to flash step in such a mass of people. He’d seen Urahara’s battered body, Yoruichi’s steaming one as it shed reiryoku, her brother’s maimed form lain beside her. Blood, Grimmjow was covered in so much blood. Red and bright, the way it drenched his face and his neck told Ichigo exactly who it belonged to. He’d been there, with Yoruichi and Urahara, and Ichigo had no idea what had happened to those two, but for them to look and feel like they were staring death in the face. And Grimmjow, looking defeated and brutalized, grinning like this was all working in his favor, sharp teeth wet with blood, eyes blue as bottle glass, falling backwards into darkness without so much as a smartass remark.

Ichigo lunged forward, pushing his exhausted body to its limit, and grasped an empty fistful of air as the jarring zip of the Garganta closing resonated around him. Ringing filled his ears as he stared straight ahead, incredulous. He’d already done enough of that today, he thought absently, surrendered to his own sentiments. But the disbelief was like the final, crippling blow.

“Ichigo!” Nel’s voice sounded somewhere behind him and he turned his head, wide eyes unblinking, unable to look away from the spot where Grimmjow had stood. There was blood on the ground, splattered all over like some nightmarish finger painting, and air, nothing but empty air. Ichigo looked at her as he felt her hand grab hold of his arm, fingers curling and digging into his flesh.

“He’s—” Ichigo couldn’t bring himself to finish his own sentence. “Is he coming back with something to help or is he fucking off because his deal with Urahara-san is over?” The look he gave her was wild, unhinged, desperate in unutterable ways.

Nel’s eyes, grey like heavy thunderclouds, were wide as she gazed at him, as if she’d just figured something out. “Oh, Ichigo.” She was sinking down beside him and it took him a moment to realize that she was sinking with him, as his body, spent and depleted, forced him to his knees.

Behind him, all around, a cheer of victory went up, a resounding cry of naked relief. But, inside him, something was screaming. Something had speared his hands to the asphalt again, held a cero to his nose, screamed retribution into his dumbstruck face. A bitten-off howl of blue rage.

_At what cost? At what cost? At what cost?_

**~**

The ruined dome of Las Noches was nowhere on the horizon as Grimmjow fell, like a meteorite of blue and blood plummeting to the ground. He didn’t even feel the impact of his body meeting the white sands, having already lost nearly all feeling. It was like he’d just woken up, lying on his back, staring up at the crooked moon and the starry sky above him. He could still feel himself gripping Pantera, unwilling to part with her even at the end, her grip the last tether to the reality he was slowly losing. He gasped in a slow, agonizing breath, feeling it rattle inside him like his ribs were loose. The slow spread of warmth down one cheek was the only way he could tell that he was still heaving blood.

It was utterly silent, not even a whisper of wind. Grimmjow thought of the cheering Shinigami, somewhere so far away now it might as well be a different lifetime. He thought of the timber of that mouthy sternritter’s voice as he damned them all with his last breath. He thought of holding a sword to Urahara Kisuke’s nose when he found it snooping about where it didn’t belong. Of Kurosaki’s stunned face tracking his every move as his feet met the pavement in that stupid town years ago for the first time. He thought about the cut of Kurosaki’s shoulders from the ground, silhouetted by the false sun of Las Noches as he stood over him, back to him, blocking a blade he had no business blocking. Grimmjow had spent most of his life bleeding out in the sand.

Poetic, really, that it should end the way it began.

The dunes cradled him, sinking and opening to welcome him home as he settled into them, feeling the soft trickle of the grains as they cascaded over his skin. Grimmjow could feel a drumming, slow and steady, inevitable. A thrum of energy as fierce and alive as any he’d felt before, coming from below him, all around him. It was too easy to settle into it, like some kind of warm embrace, the closest approximation he had. To settle and sink down, to let go of everything except his sword.

The sand sang in his veins, a soft lullaby. He could hear the words, could even taste them, but couldn’t say them, his teeth holding them back. A rhythm flowed through his throat, burning until the pain of the sternritter’s blood, of his sullied pride, of his dead fraccion, of Aizen’s hand fisted in his hair as he was born into his own body, became a distant memory. Words for all the death he’d seen, the death he’d caused, the life he’d lived, the life he had yet, still, somehow. The words came in waves and he drowned in them, let them fill him up like the sand pulling him in deeper, until he was entombed like the bones of the old Hollows.

To think he’d lived through the dredges of the food chain, clawing and eating his way out of mindlessness, through Aizen, of all the unimaginable bastards he’d ever had the displeasure of knowing, through _Kurosaki Ichigo_ , stupid, fuckin’ bleeding heart Shinigami. Only to bite it because of poison in his heart. Ridiculous, laughable really.

But, maybe, no less than he deserved, in the end.


	2. A Day Within Days

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felt inspired. Thank you for the lovely comments.

**~**

_  
“In my mind,  
I know the name of an ocean  
the size of everything that was.  
My mouth can only call it death.”_

Catherynne M. Valente, __**The Bread We Eat in Dreams**  
  


**~**

_“We have to go after him,” he said to Nel, holding her arm as tightly as his hand would let him, which was barely at all. Black was starting to waver at the edges of his vision, inching inward. “Can you open a Garganta?”_

_“No, Ichigo,” Nel murmured, placing her hand atop his, warm and still comforting despite the words coming out of her mouth. Her grasp was strong, like an anchor holding him to the moment he was quickly but surely drifting from. “We can’t go after Grimmjow.”_

_Ichigo stared at her a heartbeat too long, feeling like reality was twisting on him again. Too much, it was too much. The world was tunneling around him, narrowing alongside his vision, his chest feeling like someone had him in a vise grip. He couldn’t accept that, didn’t want to accept that. He’d already given up so much to be here, to have survived and defeated Yhwach, only to face this. Failure. It felt like utter failure._

_“Damn it, what do you mean no?” he shouted, trying to wrench himself away from her, but she was the only thing holding him upright._

_“Even if I had the energy to open a Garganta right now, we’d never find him. Hueco Mundo is too vast, it could take us weeks. And, if Grimmjow doesn’t want to be found, we never will.” Nel paused, her gaze cold but not unkind, unwavering even under the irrational rage Ichigo was leveling at her. “There are people here now who need you still.”_

_She might as well have throttled him while telling him to use logic, think about what was happening. All these people who needed help, healing, his friends and his family. They were still depending on him. Just because the battle was over didn’t mean the work was done. Grimmjow was just collateral damage, too proud to be treated by a Shinigami, even if it meant saving his life. It shouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t matter at all. One person couldn’t be prioritized over the mass, even though that thought went against everything Ichigo believed in, everything he’d ever fought for. He gripped Nel’s arm tighter, opened his mouth to snap at her as his vision whited out completely. He could remember the strangled, surprised sound he made, could remember Nel shouting his name as he crumpled, and the heady smell of blood near him._

_He didn’t wake for a week, body resting and mind screaming itself hoarse as he slept._

**~**

The Living World woke the morning following the defeat of Yhwach none the wiser. People went about their daily lives, unaware that their entire existence had been threatened just hours before. Morning dawned softly in swaths of muted orange and calm blue, sunlight spilling into Ichigo’s bedroom and across his motionless body, skin still faintly crackling with the remnants of all the kido healing he’d received. Isshin cracked the bedroom door open to check on his son, taking in the sight of Ichigo’s shifting, dreaming eyes. Every morning for the next few days he would adopt the same routine, sometimes even daring to step foot in the room and place a hand to Ichigo’s forehead to make sure that all was still well. At least physically. Even Isshin hadn’t been oblivious to the raw suffering in Ichigo’s eyes as he’d taken in the sight of his wounded mentors and friends.

When Ichigo finally woke, there was no fanfare of survival, just the gentle moonlight and the sound of his family downstairs. He’d lain there for a moment, letting it all wash over him. It was over. The war was won, the world was safe, and he was alive. They had come too close to losing, so dangerously, maddeningly close. He’d reached up to scrub his hands down his face, feeling exhausted though the stiffness in his joints told him he’d been asleep long enough that he should feel rested. With his hands over his eyes, he stared into the darkness of his palms and all he could see were Yhwach’s eyes still watching him like a waking nightmare. _At what cost?_

When he’d garnered the strength to make it downstairs, Karin, Yuzu, and Isshin had stared at him until Yuzu burst into tears and wrapped Ichigo in a hug so tight he felt his ribs creak. Karin had folded herself under his other arm, nose in his shirt, hiding her eyes. He’d hugged them back fiercely, channeling everything into that gesture until they released him. Ichigo had expected the heel of a palm to his nose as his father approached and was startled once again with a strong embrace, a large hand cradling the back of his head as they held each other.

And life began again, the way it had so many times before. Only now Ichigo was left some kind of yawning, indescribable chasm in his chest.

A few days later, the Soul Society erected a monument honoring those that had given their lives in the war. Ichigo had arrived and immediately sought out Rukia and Renji, needing the company of the two people best suited to pull his head out of his ass. They managed to put him in a halfway decent mood as they gathered on Sokyoku Hill. A glittering, impossibly large slab of black stone, the names of the deceased carved from kido, the letters glinting in the sunlight and strangely phosphorescent in the night. Ichigo had been granted temporary visitation rights to Soul Society for the unveiling ceremony, no doubt the idea of the quietly and infallibly kind Captain Commander. He hung his head in the silence as Kyoraku gave a succinct but emotional speech, lamenting what they had lost, but weaving a bright vision for the future of the world. Ichigo was in no mood for the mingling that followed, knowing there was bound to be another speech, and elected to hang back as Shinigami cleared away.

And he had to stare at the glow of Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez’s name, sandwiched between a bunch of other Shinigami he’d never even met, and pretend to be grateful. As he stood there alone, silently viewing the memorial, he couldn’t help but think how Grimmjow would hate it. Surrounded by Shinigami, even in memoriam, name etched into stone by Shinigami power, to remain on display in Shinigami territory. He’d have ceroed the whole damn thing to glittering dust and then ceroed the dust. He traced the swoop of the ‘G’ with his fingers, feeling the ambient warmth of the kido there, before dropping his hand, fingertips buzzing.

“I suppose I might be alone in this, but this whole thing is rather morbid, don’t you think?”

Ichigo’s head jerked up and drank in the sight of Nel beside him. She’d crept up on him without so much as a sound or a whisper of reiatsu. The shock of her jarred him into action and he threw his arms around her lithe frame and crushed her to his chest. She held him back, a hand absently running up his spine comfortingly, the metal of her bracelet from Urahara pressing against his vertebrae.

“It’s morbid as fuck. Why black?” he finally agreed, voice thready as he pulled away from her.

“A Shinigami aesthetic I’m sure,” she teased with a smile, eyes light. Ichigo could see the dark circles beneath them and he wondered how she’d been fairing since he’d collapsed in her arms. “Harribel is here as well. She wanted me to extend her thanks, if she doesn’t get the chance to say them herself.”

Ichigo had no idea just how involved this whole procession really was, if both Tier and Nel were here. He wondered briefly if Ishida, or Inoue, or Sado had been invited as well. Surely if they had been, they’d have come with him instead of separately. Nel was scanning the large wall of names before her grey eyes settled, much like Ichigo’s had, on Grimmjow’s name. The corners of her mouth turned down slightly, but her lips remained pressed in a thin line, as though she was warring against an instinctual frown. Ichigo watched as her gloved hands darted across his name.

“He was a mouthy jerk, but I think I might actually miss him, in time,” she admitted quietly, chest rising sharply as she took a deep breath.

Her words were like an unexpected punch to Ichigo’s gut, strong enough that he actually flinched. “He can’t be—”

“I’ve been searching,” Nel interrupted, looking up at him, and now Ichigo knew why the dark circles were there. “I’ve been trying to map my progress, but there’s so much ground to cover and I haven’t felt anything.” She paused, still gazing at him intently with an understanding that disturbed him a bit. “I— I will keep searching, if you want me to?”

“Yes,” Ichigo said without much thought, without really thinking about the weight of his request, staring without really seeing the blue shimmer of Grimmjow’s kido-inscribed name. “If he ever finds out we let him crawl away to die, the ass-kicking I’ll receive will be twice as bad,” he tried for a joke, but it was as hollow as he felt.

 _Why?_ Why did he feel like that? _Responsible_ , somehow, but _why?_ He hadn’t been the one to cause the rift between Yhwach and the former Captain Commander, the seed that sowed the entire damn war. It hadn’t even really been his problem, until his world had been threatened. Then, like a good little soldier, he’d suited up and marched into the face of death. Because that was what he did, that was what he’d always done. Nel and Grimmjow had come so much later. He still didn’t know the extent of their agreement with Urahara. Why the whole ordeal had left a bitter taste in his mouth was something he was still trying to understand.

“Can’t have that,” Nel laughed and it sounded genuine. She threaded her arm through Ichigo’s and began to pull him away from the memorial. “Let’s get the rest of this whole morbid affair over with now.”

But morbid wasn’t the right word for what followed; outrageous was better, infuriating even more apt.

The Gotei 13 issued the decree to seal the borders between the three worlds. Producing some metal, mechanical monstrosity topped with some opaque globe atop it. Nel’s arm tensed in Ichigo’s and Rukia and Renji were both gaping, taken off guard. One by one, Mayuri, who looked strangely morose, keyed in the reiatsu signature of each Shinigami, Hollow, and Visored present, changing the clearance and status of each. Allowing access only by approval of high command for Shinigami to patrol the Living World and fulfill their duties of ferrying souls. Ichigo had exchanged almost mournful looks with Nel as they’d both allowed a teaspoon-sized amount of their energy to be siphoned away and registered in the database. Harribel had said nothing as she approached the device. Rukia had murmured to him earlier that she had taken command of Hueco Mundo as a de facto leader of sorts, though he had the sense the perhaps her and Nel had formed an alliance. Her silent acquiescence told Ichigo that there must already have been a discussion about the ramifications of the device. The globe lit up with a diffuse glow, getting brighter with each person to imbue energy into it, until it radiated light like a tiny beacon.

The devices, Mayuri informed, were meant to leave the worlds to themselves, so that they could rebuild without interference from one another, without the reiatsu of one kind effecting the other. They would allow the natural flow of souls from one world to another to occur uninhibited, tracking only those that did not belong. A chance to heal and recover. Ichigo was barred from Hueco Mundo, barred from entering the Soul Society without explicit invitation, and, for whatever it was worth, essentially imprisoned in the Living World. They allowed him to remain a substitute, allowed him to keep his badge, and Ichigo was wordless with his thanks. The thought had never crossed his mind that they might try to strip him of all connection to them, to strand and maroon him. He’d been deemed useful by someone important, maybe even by several someone’s. Important enough to keep collared, albeit kept on a leash. Already the thought of seeing Rukia and Renji, Toshiro and Ikkaku only when he was needed set a cold, quiet rage to fill his chest. The plan had sound logic, something in Ichigo knew that, but couldn’t accept it.

“We’ll find a way around it, don’t you worry,” Rukia had said with that gleam in her eye before driving her elbow into his ribs for good measure. But it sure as fuck felt final as the two of them waved as he passed through the Senkaimon for what could very well be the last time.

When Ichigo found out that Urahara had helped build and design the devices, which shouldn’t have shocked him, he didn’t speak to the untrustworthy asshole for weeks. He learned even later that an emergency contact feature had been equipped to the device that Harribel and Nel took back with them to Hueco Mundo to install, so that the Shinigami and the Living World could be contacted in case of emergency. Nel checked in sparingly, using the communication feature on the bracelet Urahara had given to help control her form. Her voice would echo across the weird little answering machine in the shoten shop, informing Ichigo that she still searched as he had asked, but had yet to find even a trace of Grimmjow’s reiryoku. Every week he would listen to her quiet voice give its short report, each word like a lead weight in his gut.

Time passed in much the same way that Ichigo’s bruises healed; slowly and then all at once. The pain at the beginning, the sheer ache in every fiber of his body, bruised and battered and beaten all the way to the smallest crevice of his soul. He was a canvas of garish purples, gnarly blues, nasty yellows, and vicious reds where important things had been damaged beneath, but not enough to bleed through. Each one so tender and painful that it hurt to lay down in his bed at night and feign sleep. Because he couldn’t, sleep. And when he did, he wished he could toothpick his eyes open and never catch a wink again. Ichigo would dream about the world crumbling around him, smoldering and blazing, the feeling of so many different reiatsus burning up against him, some of them even snuffing out. Of standing before Yhwach, peering up at him, so small in the circle of his eyes. Tiny and insignificant. Strength wavering and resolve crumbling.

Ichigo would wake and press his fingers into his bruises, the flare of pain a reminder that it was over, that he was healing, mending, at least physically. And one morning he woke with a guttural gasp, tumbling out of bed and to the floor, having dreamed about Zangetsu shattering in his grasp again, of Yhwach's eyes watching him from every moment in his life. It had become such a weirdly ingrained habit that the moment he got his bearings, he reached for his forearms where some of the worst bruises had been and pressed down. And nothing. No ache, no prickle of dull pain. He’d looked down in the morning light to take in the sight of his unmarred arms, skin smoothly one color again, and wondered why that felt so wrong. Maybe because he still felt so bruised inside, in ways that he didn’t think the slow march of time was going to heal.

The months too, they bled together like all the mottled colors of his bruises until they became indistinguishable. One into two, four into nine. Quiet, serene, truly peaceful the way a genuine peacetime was meant to be, or so everyone kept telling him. So many false futures, visions that had been corrupted by a madman, falling away like dried petals dropping from a dying flower. It was an understatement to say that Ichigo felt like he couldn’t trust anything, anyone, most of all himself. Life felt as though he was constantly waiting to turn a blind corner and find the worst-case scenario every time. That paranoia sharpened him like a knife.

**~**

So, Ichigo grew quiet and complacent. He helped out in the clinic, ran occasional errands for his dad, hoped with a ferocity that was beginning to border on obsession as he listened to Nel’s weekly reports, and sparred sometimes with Yoruichi when he could get her to humor him. Which was where he found himself, sweating, panting, and covered in a sufficient layer of dust from Urahara’s underground bunker as Yoruichi and her black, jumpsuit clad figure appraised him from a reasonable distance.

Thirteen months and twenty-six days later, not that anyone was counting.

“C’mon, stop holding back. Do some fuckin’ damage already,” he swore at her, digging the tip of Zangetsu's longsword into the dried earth as he glared. Ichigo was beginning to think he’d gone into Bankai for nothing, especially judging by the carefully blank expression on Yoruichi’s face. She seemed to have lost all the good humor she’d had when she agreed to go down there with him. “I don’t wanna get rusty.”

She appraised him with narrowed, golden eyes, one eyebrow quirked as she studied him. “This is peace time.” She had the fuckin’ nerve to lift a hand to her face and inspect her nails, something she knew grated on every last one of Ichigo’s nerves.

It was bad enough that he’d been all but benched by everyone and everything and basically the entire universe, left to mop up the tears of old lady plus-souls who were scared to forget their grandkids when they passed. He’d practically had to beg Yoruichi for this today, skin crawling like he needed to shed it.

“Yeah that’s what everyone said after Aizen and shit still went down. Who’s to say he’s not planning a comeback tour with his first stop in Karakura?” Old bait and they both knew it. Aizen was buried so far down Ichigo would be surprised if the ghosts of the people he’d murdered could even find the asshole.

The look Yoruichi leveled him spoke volumes, and Ichigo tried to school his expression into a scowl as he braced himself for the insult. Instead, in the last second, her gaze softened into something horrendously like a bad mix of pity and empathy. “I’m not here to make you bleed, Ichigo.”

He pulled Zangetsu from the dry earth and tightened his fingers reflexively around the grip. “What if that’s what I want?” he asked quietly, feeling the admission of his own words resonate in his chest.

He itched and he ached for _something,_ something nameless, something that remained just out of his reach. For the first time in maybe his entire young life, Ichigo felt purposeless. He had no duty, no cause he was committed to, aimless. He felt like every other plus when he wandered the streets at night on patrol. Barred from seeing and talking to his friends, running around like a glorified errand boy. _Trapped._ Trapped in the Living World, trapped in his mundane life, trapped in his own fucking skin. He just wanted to _bleed_ again. He wanted to feel alive, to be reminded that he was alive because it felt like he was just going through the motions now.

Yoruichi’s face softened even further, contrasting heavily with the feeling of an invisible, twisting blade in Ichigo’s gut. “We don’t always get what we want,” she said after a moment, her eyes sharpening with the wisdom of every last one of her long years.

Her words soured what was left of Ichigo’s mood immediately. “Yeah, no shit.” In a blast of reiatsu, he shrugged off his bankai. “I’m going home.” He turned on his heel and strode for the ladder.

“I never told you what he said to me when we recruited him and told him our plan, did I?” she called and Ichigo froze, one foot on the first rung of the ladder, one hand gripping the side. A ringing keened in his ears and it was everything he had not to turn around, not to even look over his shoulder at her.

“Not sure I follow,” Ichigo said, voice cracking, prepared to blame it on the dust if she tried to call him on it. Everybody danced around the subject, even Yoruichi, would never talk about it outright, even say his name, as if they were trying to spare Ichigo from something.

“‘ _You’ll win, but not everyone will get out. I get it._ ’”

And that was— _Shit_. Ichigo could practically picture it. The calm, collected, and largely disinterested expression on his face, turned away like he wouldn’t even deign to make eye contact, focused somewhere else entirely, tendrils of sky-blue hair brushing the bridge of his proud nose, uttering that ridiculously self-aware statement. _Savage_ , would have been his gut instinct if he’d been there, but he hadn’t been. He was here, now, hearing it secondhand, and _shrewd_ was the only word that rang in his head. They’d all been through enough at that point, enough to know, to make reasonable conclusions about situations. Ichigo tried, helplessly, and failed to stop himself from wondering if, in saying that aloud, some part of Grimmjow had resigned himself to the fact that he might end up included among that latter.

Ichigo blinked and Yoruichi was standing in front of him, one of her hands gentle on his shoulder. She’d snuck up on him like this so many times before, that his pulse no longer jumped, like he was always expecting it. Her luminous golden eyes assessed him and when she smiled, it didn’t reach them. She’d always been able to look through him, likely from being one of the few people who had always seen him at his most vulnerable, at his most desperate to be better, be stronger, be _more._ She was doing it now, looking right through him, like he was made of glass. Whatever she saw there kept her expression soft, understanding, and she gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“Let’s get drunk, Ichigo. We can try to make your liver bleed instead.”

That was the closest thing to a consolation he was going to get, so he took it.

**~**

Somewhere beneath the rolling dunes, Grimmjow was shown a vision of stark, black lines. Weaving and winding their way across a toned chest that was not his own. Of a mask full of white teeth, sharp and dangerous, so much like what was left of his own. Of horns and clawed fingers and a black hole in a chest where a heart should have been. A shriek of anguish, of suffering, of _rage_ , cold, pure, unadulterated wrath that made his chest ache.

Not a vision, _a memory,_ blood that had soaked into the dunes, life that had left a print behind in the sand from a time he hadn’t been present for, that he didn’t remember. A memory gifted from a black blade and the chain that hung from it, rattling under the crescent moon of the night.


	3. Chambered

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> watch me gather up all my head canons and run wild with them

**~**

_“Contrary to wound,_  
 _I still know nothing_  
 _of defeat_.”

Yasmin Belkhyr _,_ **_i mourned what i could not name_**

**~**

It wasn’t clear at first whose eyes he was reliving the snippets of the memories through until a cero ringed in a familiar emerald green gathered around an outstretched hand. Grimmjow had known that Ulquiorra was dead, had been informed by Nel that it was Kurosaki that had done away with him, much to Grimmjow’s savage satisfaction. It had felt good to be right, to know that when he’d warned Ulquiorra that Kurosaki’s power could grow beyond what he could defeat that Grimmjow had been correct. So, the fourth Espada’s life had bled back into the sand then, all that he was returning to what he’d been borne from. Grimmjow wondered in passing, thought flitting away as soon as he had it, just how many other memories lingered in the dunes. Could he see through Nnoitra’s eyes? Maybe even Yammy’s?

Nel had said Kurosaki had defeated Ulquiorra, but this memory, the adversary standing before him, could not be Kurosaki. There was nothing even remotely Shinigami-like about the menacing opponent: a hollow hole through its sternum, a full mask, clawed fingers and toes, skin as white as Hueco Mundo moonlight. He knew Kurosaki had a hollow within him, and he’d only bothered to question it once when he’d been taken by surprise. He had seen the mask, had seen the black and gold of his eyes, had even fought the mask-wearing bastard, reveling in the miasmic swirl of his reiatsu, bright and gold, laced with something black and red and strangely addictive. But there was no gold reiatsu radiating from the figure before him in the memory, only stifling crimson, so heavy it was damn near siphoning the oxygen from the air.

 _Vasto Lorde_ , his mind screamed at him as he watched the masked creature bow at the waist in a strangely noble gesture, lowering its head and those wicked horns until they were pointed levelly at him. The red cero that pooled between the ends of its horns formed faster than any cero he’d ever seen, and when it barreled towards him and the green cero that released from a hand that was not his own, it overwhelmed it completely.

 _White,_ the sand echoed back to him and fuck him, Kurosaki’s hollow had a _name._ It had a _name_ and the memory that was playing against his eyelids showed it cleaving his – _Ulquiorra’s_ — arm clean off in one brutal slash of his black blade. Kurosaki’s blade, his fuckin’ bankai, that thin obsidian sword with the chain that Grimmjow used to dream about as it scarred his chest. And there it was in the hands of a Vasto Lorde hollow wearing Kurosaki Ichigo’s ridiculous orange hair and torn shihakusho and it had _a fuckin’ name._

Kurosaki hadn’t just defeated Ulquiorra, he’d obliterated him, stomped on his head and held it to the ground and blew him to smithereens with one of those monstrous ceros at point-blank range. All after stopping a bolt of pure green to the palm like it was nothing, an attack that Grimmjow could feel the thrum of energy from and the way that Ulquoirra had handled it with the delicate precision of someone afraid of their own ability.

All that unfathomable power, all that raw strength, Kurosaki had had it all along, and he’d used _none_ of it to fight Grimmjow. Had Kurosaki even taken him seriously? Grimmjow had sacrificed everything, _everything_ to kidnap the friend of his that had regenerated his arm so he could fight Kurosaki one on one at even strength. He’d thrown away every tentative security of his life and his usefulness to Aizen just to stand toe-to-toe with the fucker and stare into his black and gold eyes again. Eyes that could have just been soulless black holes in a full mask. Instead, Kurosaki had hammed it up, put on a good show, kept the good shit saved up for someone ranked higher than Grimmjow. Fighting on equal ground, yeah fucking right. Kurosaki had probably laughed his way through Nnoitra and then Ulquiorra, thinking he’d pulled one over on Grimmjow.

 _To protect_ , the sand hummed, as if it was trying to justify the memory it had allowed him to see somehow. And _fuck that,_ he thought viciously. The livid rage that swelled in him made the sand quake around his entombed body, Ulquiorra’s dead memories falling away. Kurosaki had held out on him, had lied to his fuckin’ face. Their score was far from settled. He was still owed his fair fight.

Heat scorched its way along his skin, crawling in his veins, and rolled off of him in a sheen of vapor. His flexed his fingers, feeling the stretch of his skin, the pull of his muscles, the gentle slide of sand as it shifted around his buried body. A torrent of energy crackled out from him, surging through the sand in bolts of blue. Something liquid-hot burnt its way up his chest, tracking the length of his scar, radiating out from his hollow hole. He screwed his face up in pain as the heat rushed over him, brutal and too fast for him to fend off even if he’d wanted to.

The sand detonated, blasting skyward and petrifying instantly, struck crystalline by blue-black lightning, arching over the blast site like naked tree branches. A black, clawed hand broke the surface and a blaze of light beamed through the dark sky, illuminating the desert in bright blue.

**~**

Yoruichi wandered out of the kitchen with a staggering amount of liquor clutched in her slender arms, bottles of varying sizes, colors, and fullness. She’d showered while Ichigo had shrugged back into his body before settling at the table to wait, staring moodily down, tracing a water ring with his pinky finger over and over. She deposited her armful on the table with a thunk, managing to set them all down properly without knocking any over. Ichigo blinked, taking in her black crop top with the words ‘make me purr’ stamped in bold white across her chest and leggings the same shade as her hair that looked like they were laminated to her.

“Moonshine first,” she announced with ferocious glee. “I managed to smuggle this out of Sereitei after that sad memorial.”

She pulled two shot glasses from her bra and Ichigo couldn’t resist the automatic instinct to roll his eyes. Yoruichi grabbed a tall bottle, pale and looking almost like old ceramic crockery, which Ichigo failed to notice had no stopper or lid until she balanced the lip of it on the edge of the table and drove the heel of her palm against it.

“What the shit—” he exclaimed, leaning back as she shattered the top of the bottle, broken pieces of it scattering across the floor and table.

She brought it up to her nose, taking a deep whiff, before screwing her face up in something akin to pain. Then she grinned. “This shit has been sitting in a wall in the Shihouin Estate since Kisuke and I hid it there almost two hundred years ago. It’s _rank._ ” She poured the absolutely clear liquid into each shot glass all the way to the rim and Ichigo eyed it with what little self-preservation he had. It smelled like paint stripper for shit’s sake.

“Is this gonna kill me?” he asked warily, pulling the shot glass closer to him, watching the liquid wobble uncertainly against the edge, nearly spilling.

“You said you wanted to bleed. This’ll strip your insides better than I ever could.” Yoruichi set the broken bottle on the table before rising to her feet again. “Kisuke has to try this. We did make it after all.”

Ichigo held the glass at eye level, giving it an apprehensive once-over, before shrugging. If Yoruichi wanted to actually kill him, she wouldn’t give him the option to refuse. He slammed the shot back just as the two of them came back into the room, setting the glass back down onto the table. It scorched like literal hellfire all the way down, so much so that Ichigo could literally feel it hit his stomach. Tears sprang to his eyes and he let out a spluttering cough as Yoruichi folded down beside him again, pulling another shot glass from her bra.

“What the actual fuck is this shit?” Ichigo shouted nonsensibly, watching through watery eyes as Yoruichi poured one out for Urahara, the two of them clinking their glasses together before downing them in tandem.

He’d drank with them enough times to have an idea of how they both handled their alcohol. Yoruichi drank like someone desperately trying to give themselves cirrhosis, and Urahara could handle a couple glasses of sake before he was a loose-limbed mess on the floor. The moonshine brought an immediate pink to the tip of Urahara’s nose and that told Ichigo everything he needed to know about how this night was going to go. Urahara grappled with a bottle of unopened sake, filling both his and Ichigo’s glasses while Yoruichi poured herself more jet fuel. In the corner of the room where it had sat since they’d returned from the quote-unquote memorial, the machine that kept Ichigo stranded in the Living World beeped softly.

Ichigo scowled at it, the alcohol already warming his blood, numbing his tired bones, and fueling his anger. The globe atop it glowed subtly, a warm white. Nothing more than a mechanical bollard with a lightshow on top of it and it was ruining his life in about twelve different ways. “The hell is that thing even supposed to do?”

“Well it maintains the security of the world borders, of course! You did have your reiatsu signature taken,” Urahara said cheerily as he sipped at his sake. He reached up to remove his hat, depositing it on the table next to his glass. “The machines monitor everyone who has been registered so that their whereabouts can be policed.”

“Yeah, I got that much from the pep talk Kurotsuchi gave before strong-arming everyone into submitting,” he grumbled, making Yoruichi snort as she tossed back her second glass.

“To be more specific, the travel from one world to another requires a two-person authentication, one from both sides. Anyone registered in the system that attempts to portal to another world without invitation will be immediately detained by the 99th Bakudo, but only the first degree.” Urahara gave a gentle shrug as though that wasn’t an absolutely overkill punishment.

Something, some small bit of hope inside of him deflated at that comment. Somehow, Ichigo had thought that maybe there was a catch, a secret, a loophole. There always was with Urahara, at least there always had been in the past. But a rebound that strong meant business in the worst way.

“Why the hell did you agree to this? To make those stupid techno posts?” Urahara regarded Ichigo over the rim of his cup and said nothing for a moment as Ichigo slammed the rest of his sake, pushing his glass towards Yoruichi as a clear sign that he wanted the stronger shit. “They offered you something, didn’t they, the Gotei 13 and Central 46?”

Urahara’s perfectly placid expression, albeit with a pink nose and rosy cheeks, gave him away. “Why do you want to know?” he asked carefully.

“They cleared your exile, didn’t they?” Ichigo stopped, and his vision swam as a wave-like epiphany washed over him. “Yours _and_ Yoruichi’s. That would be worth it, both of your freedom. But then they trapped you here too. We’re all trapped. And waiting for something that might never come, a threat that probably doesn’t exist.”

Yoruichi’s yellow eyes widened like an after-thought as she stared into the glass she was filling, as if she couldn’t believe Ichigo was really going to get into it, right then and there. She had only filled his shot glass halfway with her illegal moonshine, but tipped the bottle even further, filling it to the top before shoving it back in his direction.

“So, they’re Urahara proof, then,” Ichigo concluded, shoulders slumping at the realization as he ran a finger around the lip of his glass absently.

“Unfortunately, they are very thorough,” Urahara replied with a sigh that sounded just as defeated as Ichigo felt. “But they also monitor the levels of spirit energy in all three worlds. The goal of these devices is to help stabilize everything; they aren’t meant to be used long-term. Besides, they won’t register lower level Hollows tearing through, which was why so many exceptions had to be made for patrolling Shinigami. But they are set up to go off if something big comes through, say a Menos Grande.” Urahara rubbed his chin in thought before giving Ichigo a pointed look. “Soul Society is repairing, the Living World needs to be left to its own devices, and Hueco Mundo is in desperate need of peace to recover after the Sternritter’s attempts at extermination. The spirit energy levels there are worryingly low, but it is maintaining. Harribel and Nel have plans to raise it slowly.”

Yoruichi downed her shot and slammed the empty glass forcefully on the table. “If I wanted to talk shop and be depressed, I’d have dragged Tessai in here instead. Ichigo wanted to _bleed,_ Kisuke. And I don’t think he was talking about his ears. Drink,” she commanded, nodding at Ichigo’s refill.

He didn’t need to be told twice, shuddering as he swallowed the moonshine, rejoicing in the bloom of warmth that spread in his chest like a fire. Taking the tanking conversation and atmosphere into her own hands, Yoruichi launched into the story of how the moonshine came into existence, how her and Urahara had set up an entire black market for the shit, creating the demand and then feeding into the supply. How that money had been used to start some of Urahara’s experiments with the Hogyoku, masquerading as a generous gift from the Shihouin family. It spiraled into stories of their youth and the trouble they’d always cause together, and tension eased out of Ichigo incrementally, alongside his sobriety.

In the twilight hours of the early morning, Urahara held up one arm and waved it aimlessly, his hand flopping at the wrist, as he conceded defeat before putting his head in his arms atop the table and passing out. Ichigo was blitzed enough that he laughed until he cried as Urahara mostly missed, his forehead hitting the table with considerable force within the circle of his arms. And then he watched with quiet, gut-wrenching adoration as Yoruichi managed to stagger to her feet, procure a blanket from somewhere, and drape it over Urahara’s shoulders. Then it was only the two of them, and Ichigo was too far gone to notice the way Yoruichi was watching him like she was searching for a prime time for an ambush. She poured the last dredges of the moonshine into their respective glasses and it didn’t take very long at all after that.

“You’ve been trying to bury this shit so deep, I can’t believe you’re not rotting inside yet,” Yoruichi slurred at him, poking a sharp and impressively manicured nail into his chest. He winced and rubbed the spot when she swayed away. “Jus’ let it all out, Ichigo. I’ve got no moral high ground to pass judgement from.”

Ichigo opened his mouth, crooking his head where it was cradled in the palm of his propped hand to stare idly at Yoruichi, before closing it. A back corner of his brain was warning him that this conversation was about to enter territory he wasn’t sure he was ready for, stunningly drunk or sober, but then he opened his dumb mouth again anyway and the words just tumbled out. “What’s there even left to say?”

The look she gave him was equal amounts of fed up and intrigued before she rolled her eyes so hard the whites flashed at Ichigo. “He was awfully pretty to look at,” she said offhandedly, gaze drifting towards the ceiling as though she was imagining him. Ichigo inhaled his liquor on accident, everything going down the wrong pipe as he hacked and tried to regain his breath. “That jawline was so defined you could have found it in the dictionary.”

Yoruichi’s gaze slid, slow like molasses, over to Ichigo whose ears were red, and she grinned wildly. Now they were getting somewhere. She leaned over to thump him hard on the back as if that would help. “I don’t hear you denying it,” she garbled as Ichigo reached for his drink again. The red spread from his ears, washing down the back of his neck and she grinned even harder.

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he muttered stubbornly, most of his shot sloshing onto the table as Yoruichi elbowed him. He was almost shocked that the grain alcohol didn't instantly burn a hole right through the wood.

“C’mon, kid, he was hot. Try not to bust an artery,” she laughed.

Later, so much later, Ichigo would wish he could chalk their conversation up to alcohol. Loose lips sink ships and all that nonsense. But they were all the things that had been rotting in his heart, just like Yoruichi had said. Everything that had been weighing on his mind, plaguing what little sleep he got most nights, twisting all his dreams into nightmares. The guilt was like a hand around his throat, squeezing slowly, suffocating him at an agonizing pace.

“You ever have somebody look at you and _see_ you? Like really see you?” he started, frowning at the slur in his own words. “Not the way people look at you and notice the parts that are ugly and broken, and they ignore those because they don’t wanna deal with that. I mean, somebody who looks at you and sees the heavy shit and doesn’t blink, just takes it all in.”

Yoruichi glanced sidelong at Urahara’s slumped form with a fond smile. “Yeah, I’m familiar.” When she looked back at Ichigo, his eyes were glassy with a distant look, as though he was watching something she couldn’t. She watched his throat dip as he swallowed what was left in his glass, inebriated fingers holding it almost too loosely.

“Inoue was one of the first people, at the beginning. She understood without having to ask.” The smile that tugged at Ichigo’s lips was almost bittersweet, the memory a good one that was long since corrupted. “The day I pulled my hollow mask on in front of her, saw the fear in her eyes, I knew she’d never look at me the same no matter how hard she tried to otherwise.”

He cut himself off, face contorting with sudden melancholy. Across the table, Urahara let out a soft snore and burrowed deeper into his arms. Ichigo had always tried to be good in the way he knew was right. He knew his idea of what was right and just didn’t always align with everybody else’s ideas, but he’d always adhered to his own code of honor. Saving Grimmjow from plummeting to his likely death after their duel in the desert had been _right_. It hadn’t mattered then that Grimmjow was supposed to be an enemy that he’d just defeated, and it still didn’t matter now. He’d do it all over again and he’d do it the exact same way. He’d listen to Grimmjow roar in his face about not accepting that he’d lost because there was just _no way_ , refusing to drop his sword even as his own blood was soaking the sand, echoing every sentiment Ichigo had ever had since he’d first picked up a sword. Ichigo would grab his wrist again and hold it, feel the corded muscle and the strength of the bones there, the warmth of Grimmjow’s bloodied skin, and the thrum of his power, still a maelstrom just beneath the surface even after the fight of his life. And he’d make the same promise even though he’d never get to fulfill it.

He still dreamed about the way Grimmjow had shouted ‘fuck you’ right in his stupid, exhausted face, his sharp teeth set in a snarl, blue eyes blazing with the conviction of someone who had never learned how to surrender.

“Grimmjow saw _me_. Saw right through me even. And that’s why I—” Ichigo faltered, eyes drifting to Yoruichi who was slouched over the table, staring at him almost rapturously. “I guess I thought anyone that was as stubborn and stupid as I was had to be some type of invincible, ya know?” He swallowed down the lump that swelled in his throat.

“You gotta let this all go, Ichigo,” she murmured suddenly, and when he met her gaze, it was as full-up with sadness as he was. Her eyes were glazed with inebriation, but her words were clear. "You've been torturing yourself for over a year, over a situation you never had any control of."

The outrage blindsided Ichigo. “Don’t you get it? He’s dead, and it’s _my_ _fault_. It’s because of _me_. He agreed to fight because I was there, and he’s dead now. And I didn’t even get—”

_Get the chance to help._

_Get the chance to catch him like I did the last time._

_Get the chance to thank him._

_Get the chance to say goodbye._

_Because fighting him was like screaming into the void and finally hearing an echo._

“Then he died doing exactly what he said he would. He was nobody’s soldier, nobody’s pawn. Kisuke and I didn’t con him. Fuck if we didn’t try though; he was smarter than I gave him credit for,” Yoruichi admitted, looking very nearly stricken. She scooted closer and reached out unexpectedly to cradle Ichigo’s face in her palms, hands wicked hot against his cheeks. “I know who and what we are make it difficult, but you need to mourn him and then you need to let him _go_.”

Let him go, let it all go. Ichigo supposed that dwelling on it obsessively, trying to remember and relive every swing of their swords, every cold and calculating look from those blue eyes, that sharp mouth and all the sharp words that had ever come out of it… He wasn’t going to move forward if he kept staying rooted where he was, like some stupid tree putting down roots in the first place that felt comfortable. It felt like letting go of a friend he hadn’t been given the time to get to know, and that was the reality of the situation at the end of the day. But Yoruichi was right, and Ichigo would be damned if he let Grimmjow win in any context.

Yoruichi snagged a nearly empty bottle of plum wine and poured their glasses full again. “To Grimmjow,” she said, holding the shot up for Ichigo to clink his glass against hers. He damn near missed because the room was beginning to spin a little too fast now. “To the most ruthless, unnervingly brilliant, blue-eyed hottie I’ve ever had the good fortune to threaten.”

Inside Ichigo’s chest something snapped, like a tether pulled too taut. He braced himself for the pain, for the fresh wave of guilt, but only a gentle warmth filled him. Like opening a window and letting the sun in, airing out the room, changing the sheets, cleaning out the rot in his soul. _Closure._

Ichigo snorted before cracking a grin. “Rest in peace, asshole,” he murmured and meant it.

They carried each other up the stairs, leaving Urahara behind, bracing their hands along the wall, laughing as they teetered this way and that way like they were on rough seas. Ichigo deposited Yoruichi in her room before crawling into the guest room, thankful that the bedding had already been lain out, likely by Tessai who knew how these nights always ended. He yanked his shirt over his head and pitched it on the floor somewhere, too hot from all the alcohol, and fell ungracefully into the pillow. And he drifted, gentle and dreamless for the first time in so many long months, with only the lulling sound of night drifting in through the half-open window.

Some time later, distantly, like he was hearing an ambulance siren echo off the tall buildings downtown as it got closer and _louder,_ Ichigo began to become aware of an incessant wailing. It was a testament to just how much Yoruichi had goaded him into drinking that it apparently was taking the equivalent of an air raid siren to rouse him. Something was absolutely _blaring_ in the shoten shop downstairs, deafening and only growing shriller somehow. With a groan that felt like it came up from the soles of his feet, Ichigo rolled over onto his side, putting a hand flat on the floor and trying to push himself up into a sitting position. Staggering to his feet, Ichigo shoved the sliding door of the spare upstairs bedroom open and stumbled into the hallway. He gripped the stair railing like a lifeline and managed not to crack his head open like a watermelon on any of the steps. A blinding light was flashing and rotating, looking all for the world like a real, honest-to-god ambulance now, shedding red light across the walls, the floor, the table still strewn with their empty cups and bottles. Ichigo blinked blearily, still half-inebriated, trying to force his eyes to focus. The room was empty, Urahara no longer slumped pitifully on the table. Shoved into the corner of the room was his stupid world divider that was screeching and the sphere atop it was what was emitting the pulsing red light. Alarm, it was an _alarm._ But _for what?_

Ichigo took a hesitant, drunkenly wobbling step off the last stair and faced the open room, hand still flat to the wall for support, blinking around a sudden shadow. He was drunk enough still that the slide of cold steel through the skin of his shoulder, through the meat of his chest, and into the wood of the wall behind him only registered when the pain exploded through him.

The shadow before him, like something out of one of his nightmares, illuminated in swaths of flickering red light, eyes shrouded in a ferocious blue glow, glaring at Ichigo as he held his sword almost carelessly, a _very_ not dead Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez curled his upper lip back, flashing sharp incisors, and sneered.

"You’ve been holding out on me, Kurosaki.”


	4. Subterfuge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love you guys a whole stupid lot. Thanks for all the love, especially for the comments. ❤️

**~**

_“You’ll ache. And you’re going to love it.  
It will crush you.  
And you’re still going to love all of it.  
Doesn’t it sound lovely beyond belief?”_

Ernest Hemingway, _**The Garden of Eden**_

**~**

Ichigo was aware of only four things in that moment: he was still somewhat tipsy, he was still very much in his human body, the world divider was still blaring and flashing, and Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez who was supposed to be really quite dead had just skewered him to the wall with his sword. _Fuck_ , Tessai was really going to kill him when he saw the damage. He still hadn’t been forgiven for breaking a screen door months ago, even though it was all because Yoruichi had _thrown him_ through the damn thing.

The fifth thing was the stream of warmth that had begun to drip down his arm and his bare chest, slow but steady. The pain hadn’t quite registered yet, or maybe his brain was actively shutting it all out because it was too busy processing what it saw standing in front of him. Grimmjow looked identical to the day that he’d given Ichigo a bloody smile across a sea of war-wearied Shinigami before disappearing into a Garganta, sans the copious amounts of blood. The same black, zippered jumpsuit and collared white jacket and slouching belts. The same mask of jagged teeth, the same stripe of teal estigma under both his ludicrously blue eyes. _Real,_ he looked so startlingly tangible, like Ichigo could reach out and touch him.

“Think you’re real slick, don’t you, Kurosaki?”

And, huh, that was definitely Grimmjow’s grating baritone, the same gravel and strange warmth to it. It wasn’t fair at all, Ichigo thought petulantly for a moment. The day he finally had the inner strength to make peace with his guilt and his shame was the same day his brain decided to conjure a picture-perfect replica of his biggest regret. Like it was trying to punish him for achieving some semblance of personal growth.

“Thought I’d never find out that you’re actually just a lying sack of shit.”

There was something very different about him though, in his reiatsu, in the way it was actively rolling across Ichigo’s skin like an indecent, full body caress with just a little too much pressure behind it, toeing a line. The scar that bisected his chest, the one Ichigo had given him, was glowing blue ever so faintly. In fact, all of him was glowing a faint blue, reiryoku literally steaming off of him, making him almost shimmer in front of Ichigo’s intoxicated eyes. Even his eyes, shining like two beacons in the flashing red light of the room, narrowed and focused on Ichigo like he was the only thing in the world at that very moment.

Ichigo frowned, eyebrows pulling down, nose crinkling up. “This is cruel, even for my fucked up brain,” he announced finally. “I lucid dream all the time, but I never dream about _you._ ”

“This ain’t a dream, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow snarled, daring to take a step forward into Ichigo’s space, letting go of the grip of Pantera and leaving her impaled in Ichigo’s left shoulder.

In the low light, Grimmjow must have missed Ichigo’s unskewered arm coming up until his hand cradled the unmasked side of Grimmjow’s face, his calloused thumb sweeping feather-light along his estigma. The gesture struck him dumb for a moment and he stared into Ichigo’s half-lidded eyes, the tilt of his head, the disbelief plain in his unblinking gaze. Warm, solid, skin somehow uncharacteristically smooth for someone who had always thrown himself into everything. Grimmjow’s eyes were blue like a cloudless summer day, opened so comically wide the whites were showing. Hell, this was the best and worst dream Ichigo had ever had since he stopped dreaming about his mom.

Grimmjow took a step back faster than Ichigo’s eyes could track, the warmth of his skin disappearing from under his hand, followed by an awful squelching noise and the wrenching sensation of something trying to pull him inside out. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?” he growled, pointing the tip of his sword against Ichigo’s bare chest, drawing a thin rivulet of blood. The sudden gulf of space between them felt enormous.

Numbly, and reluctant to look away from Grimmjow, Ichigo turned his gaze to his shredded shoulder, lifting a hesitant hand up to run his fingers across the mangled, blood-wet flesh in disbelief. This had certainly never happened in any dream he’d had before.

“Ow,” Ichigo mumbled dazedly.

And oh, _oh._ The pain there was very much not a figment of his royally fucked up brain. It was as real as the rent open wound in his shoulder, just below his collarbone and to the side of his ribs. Grimmjow had angled his sword precisely so it would cleave right through him without hitting bone. As soon as he had pulled his sword out in one, swift motion, the gash began welling out blood at an alarming pace. Between the blood, the screeching and flashing of the world divider, Grimmjow’s rage damn near radiating from him, and the sound of footsteps thumping down the stairs beside him, reality finally hit Ichigo like a punch to the face.

“Oh, you absolute asshole,” he swore before listing to the side under a knockdown current of sudden vertigo.

The next several seconds happened in what felt like double-time. There was a shout of a kido spell, Grimmjow’s head snapping up to the origin of it somewhere on the stairs, but he was gone as a bolt of light singed the floor right where he’d been standing. Ichigo’s back hit the wall behind him and he slid down it as the room plunged into sudden darkness and silence before the actual room lights were switched on to reveal utter fucking chaos. Grimmjow had Tessai by the throat with a hand that was blackened to his wrist with wickedly sharp claws, the tip of his zanpakuto also nestled firmly under Tessai’s chin as an additional threat. Urahara had his sword pointed at the back of Grimmjow’s neck. Yoruichi was on her knees in front of Ichigo, hands already ignited with the calming green aura of healing kido. Her eyes were wide, her usually reserved expression cracked open in shock, and Ichigo could read the startled tension in the set of her shoulders. Like a cat with its hackles up. He’d have sworn she was sober except for the subtle tremor of her hands as she held them over his bleeding shoulder, belying just how hard she was concentrating.

“Tell me we’re down in the bunker and you knocked me flat on my ass,” he found himself whispering to her, body shaking as the pain and adrenaline began to seep through the tsunami of surprise that had overtaken him. Shit, that really hurt. “Don’t look at the wall, Tessai is gonna kill me.” He was rambling now and he knew it, his grip on the situation beginning to unravel. The way Yoruichi was crouched before him took up his entire line of sight, her shoulders blocking the standoff on the other side of the room.

“Grimmjow-san, you really do seem to have nine lives,” Urahara said from across the room and Ichigo blinked around a sudden rush of nausea as he felt something deep in his shoulder, likely muscle, begin to knit itself back together.

It couldn’t be a dream anymore, not if all three of them could see and hear and feel what he was. They were all relatively stupid in certain capacities and it felt like he, Yoruichi, and Urahara shared one brain cell between the three of them some days, but there was no way they were all having a mass hallucination, right? Unless this was some test, some fucked up psychological litmus test, in which case Ichigo was failing spectacularly. Otherwise that meant— that meant Grimmjow _was real_ , he _wasn’t dead,_ had maybe never been dead. That they’d all been mourning a multi-dimensional motherfucker who didn’t know how to roll over and die, and oh Ichigo was gonna kill him for this. He didn’t realize he’d said all of that out loud until Yoruichi answered him.

“Take a deep breath, Ichigo,” Yoruichi instructed, but he was hardly paying attention. “Your body is in shock.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” he gasped out, gritting his teeth against the pain.

A reverberating growl, like the distant rumble of thunder, sounded through the room. “Patch him up real nice and then hand him over, Yoruichi. Kurosaki and I have a score to settle.”

“I thought you’d both moved past this?” Urahara seemed to wonder aloud and Ichigo desperately wished he could _see_ what was going on, but didn’t dare lean away from Yoruichi and break her concentration.

“Get your sword out of my neck, Kisuke. I’m not fuckin’ here to play games.”

“If you let my very dear friend there breathe, I might consider it.” Urahara said plainly and the gasp of breath that followed after was a deafening acquiescence. “I must say, you look pretty good for a guy that’s been dead for over a year.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” Grimmjow snapped, and, at the very least, Ichigo could _hear_ the way his patience was running thin just by the pitch of his voice.

“When I’m done,” Yoruichi began whispering as she moved one of her hands to Ichigo’s head and the thunderous ache at his temples began to abate. It took him a moment to focus in on her face through the clearing haze of pain. “I’m going to try and restrain him. I’m fast enough that I might be able to catch him by surprise. You need to find your combat pass. I’ll open the bunker hatch, you get him down there. At least he can’t destroy everything from there.”

 _And do what_ , Ichigo wanted to shout in retaliation. _Fight him, just like he wanted?_ Grimmjow was supposed to be an ally of sorts. At least, he’d helped them in the Blood War. Hard to say where his loyalties lay after the pincushion he’d just made of Ichigo. But it was _Grimmjow_ , and everything that he and Yoruichi had talked about earlier _didn’t_ _matter_ _anymore_. Because all of those decisions, all of that resolve, had rested solely on the fact that Grimmjow was dead, and he definitely wasn't dead now. All of that closure had to be scrapped because it wasn’t real anymore. What kind of terrible plan was that anyway? To just throw Ichigo blindly at Grimmjow like that was going to solve the problem? But she was right, a figment of mass hysteria or not, Grimmjow would tear the shoten shop apart as a warning, and then Ichigo would be on Tessai’s shit list forever. This wasn't going to end without a fight of some kind.

Yoruichi helped Ichigo to his feet, lingering to make sure he could stay there without her help. Their movement drew the attention of the other three across the room and Ichigo could feel Grimmjow's eyes boring holes into the back of Yoruichi's skull from where he pretended to stay slumped over her shoulders. He could feel the reiryoku building under the thin material of her shirt, thrumming beneath her skin and he braced himself. They’d played this trick on people while sparring so many times that if they had a book, this would be the oldest trick in it. At least until most everyone had wised up and stopped coming around, leaving Ichigo at the mercy of Yoruichi’s fickle moods whenever he was itching for a fight.

“Ready?” she murmured, and he loosened his grip on her shoulder to signal.

He pretended to stagger, giving her the space to slide her foot back for better leverage. She was gone in a flash, the wrenching sound of the bunker door being thrown open in a hurry echoing through the room. Urahara jumped back immediately, too good at reading a room not to catch on quick, and withdrew his sword from Grimmjow’s neck as Ichigo dove for the table, knowing it was the last place he’d seen his combat pass. Sweeping a leg underneath it, he kicked something small and solid out, sending it skittering across the floor as several shouts of protest sounded around him. He raised his head in time to see another bolt of kido strike the place where Grimmjow had been standing just as Yoruichi launched herself at him.

But he was gone, again, faster than Ichigo had ever remembered him being, faster than Yoruichi had anticipated. Ichigo’s fingers brushed his combat pass as he lunged for it just as something caught him around the throat and wrenched him upright with frightening strength, essentially choking him as it pulled him to his feet. There was only one other person in all existence except for Renji who would willingly manhandle him like that, so naturally it was the person who most wanted to gut him at the moment. Ichigo could feel that strip of skin bared by the deep vee of Grimmjow’s jumpsuit as he was drawn into a chokehold, and god his skin was _burning_ against Ichigo’s bare back, a strange contrast with the cold of the zipper pressed to his spine. But it was just Grimmjow’s arm caging him in, no cold steel of his sword pointed anywhere yet.

 _Not like this, not like this,_ all of him was shouting, the desperation of that feeling stronger even than Grimmjow’s forearm, dragging him backwards and towards the open hatch.

“We agreed to a battle on equal ground, Kurosaki, and you didn’t uphold your end of our bargain,” Grimmjow ground out, his lips moving against the shell of Ichigo’s ear in a way that was painfully distracting.

“Whatever you’re talking about, I’m sure there’s an explanation,” Ichigo strangled out against the steel of Grimmjow’s arm pressed to his throat, not stupid enough to try and pry it away.

Grimmjow had accused him of holding out, of lying, but in what capacity? They’d had their deathmatch in the desert and Ichigo had put _everything_ he’d had into it, had won by sheer force of will in the end, not by skill, or strength, or battle prowess. And the accusations, the new threats, they carried a different weight than the last time Grimmjow had threatened him. That had been almost a playful taunt, as playful as someone like Grimmjow could be, Ichigo had assumed. But these were serious, their gravitas almost as heavy as Grimmjow’s strange reiatsu.

“Don’t give a shit. And I’m sure as shit not here to talk about it either.”

Ichigo took a deep breath, resigning himself to the beating he was going to have to give and likely receive. Take it in stride, take the hit, take the next one, keep getting up, the same old song and dance. He locked eyes with Yoruichi across the room as he tightened his hold on his combat pass. Grimmjow was standing right on the edge of the open bunker hatch, it would take nothing at all to send them both over the edge. So, he did, slamming his combat pass against his chest and ejecting his soul backwards into Grimmjow, the force of it knocking them both into open air. The shout that came from behind him was one of surprise as they plummeted down towards the dry earth.

Ichigo managed to tuck and roll at the last moment, sliding backwards across the craggy earth as he reached to his waist and his back to draw both his swords. Grimmjow rose from a crouch, right hand still gripping his sword and his left hand still black as pitch. Ichigo couldn’t help but stare where he had claws instead of fingers now. That was new and they were horrifyingly sharp looking and Ichigo tried to quash the sudden thrill that ran through him as he watched Grimmjow flex them threateningly.

“Where have you been?” Ichigo demanded, hoping the hysteria wasn’t bleeding into his voice. He gripped Zangetsu until his knuckles went white against his skin. “You were _dead_ , Grimmjow.”

“Bull _shit_ , Kurosaki. Think I’d know if I’d taken a year-long dirt nap,” he snapped, blue eyes flashing in the fake sunlight. He appeared to make up his mind and began to stalk towards Ichigo with purpose. “Stop trying to fuck with my head.”

“Fourteen months,” Ichigo corrected before he could stop himself, nearly tripping in a deep divot as he began to steadily back away from Grimmjow’s menacing approach.

“What?”

“It doesn’t matter, I don’t want to fight you,” Ichigo said, bearing the full force of Grimmjow’s glare, wondering if now was the time to put at least a singular shunpo’s worth of distance between them. “I _won’t_ fight you.”

“We’ve already done this dance, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow snarled, upper lip pulling back in anger. “But Nnoitra’s not here to interrupt us this time, so that’s not going to work.”

Grimmjow lunged at Ichigo so swiftly that instinct was all that saved him from getting gutted by black claws as he blocked with his short sword. _Fast,_ Ichigo’s mind supplied unhelpfully. God, he was so much faster than he’d been before. Ichigo had thought he’d known from watching Grimmjow launch himself at the sternritter who apparently hadn’t killed him, but this was on a different level. It shouldn’t be so inconceivable, that Grimmjow had become stronger, a whole year and a half had passed from their fight in the desert to when he leapt out of a Garganta in the Soul Palace. But he’d dodged _Yoruichi_ just moments ago. If he hadn’t been dead for the last fourteen months and Nel hadn’t found any trace of him, what had he been doing, where had he been?

He leapt back as Grimmjow swung out with his sword, narrowly missing the shoulder he’d already butchered. “Would you stop?” Ichigo shouted as he flashed stepped out of the way of a blinding and unanticipated cero. “I don’t— I want answers!”

The look Grimmjow leveled him was devastating, a cross between unbridled rage and poorly restrained glee. This was everything Ichigo had wanted delivered in the worst possible way. But fuck him if that wasn’t how Grimmjow operated, the bastard. The bastard who was currently regarding Ichigo through the curling smoke and dust of his cero with narrowed eyes, all slitted blue with a wash of teal. He emanated danger though, every tense line of him promising pain.

“I know what you did to Ulquiorra,” Grimmjow taunted, blue eyes flickering, face still composed.

Ichigo blanched, staggering back like he’d been physically struck, everything in his mind whiting out in absolute fear. “You _what_?”

The grin that split Grimmjow’s face could only be described as maniacal. All sharp, white teeth and the wild eyes of someone who had scented weakness. “I know what you became.”

Only Ishida and Inoue really knew what had happened during that battle. Ichigo’s own memories were fuzzy, like watching an old, grainy movie that was missing slides of its original reel of film. Sometimes, he’d dream about it, what his body had done under the control of his Hollow. Sometimes he could see a hand that was supposed to be his own clutching his sword. But his fingernails were black and his skin was white and everything was _wrong_. Like being stuffed in the trunk while somebody else drove your car. It was different now, he reminded himself a little helplessly, he was in control now. But there had only been the four of them there, and one of them was dead, and he knew Inoue would have never said anything while she was in Hueco Mundo with Urahara before the siege of the Soul Palace. So, how the fuck did Grimmjow know anything about that when he’d been bleeding out on the sand so far below?

“How?” Ichigo found himself demanding, voice cracking on the question, trying to fight through the dread that someone else _knew,_ someone else knew he’d lost all control once, had almost lost his humanity.

Grimmjow eyed him scrupulously, the way he always had, like he was looking for flaws to exploit, a crack in Ichigo’s armor he could dig his blade into and chip away at. He grinned even wider at the horror in Ichigo’s expression, lips and masked teeth parting on a throaty, wicked laugh. “That a secret you were trying to keep? My bad,” he stated without an ounce of remorse as he started towards Ichigo again. “You turn into that thing right now and I’ll tell you whatever you wanna hear.”

“I can’t—” Ichigo began to say, because he couldn’t just turn into _that_ again, he was in control now, _damn it._

But Grimmjow had moved again, the quiet _bzzt_ of his Sonido the only thing that heralded his movement as he stood in front of Ichigo. “Wrong answer,” came Grimmjow’s voice from behind another cero that he charged at point-blank range in a black palm, right in Ichigo’s dumbstruck face. _Ready, fire, aim._ Business as usual then.

The Getsuga Tenshou that Ichigo let loose to counter it was instinct too, pure reflex. But it was only enough to drive Grimmjow back a few feet. Ichigo gritted his teeth, feeling something strain in his jaw. _Nothing_ , not even a scratch was on Grimmjow, who all but brushed the attack aside, rolling his shoulders out and sweeping a clawed hand down the lapel of his jacket like he’d seen a piece of lint. That was as much as Ichigo was willing to use against him, not when there were more important things than fighting all out.

“It’s gonna be like that then, huh?” Grimmjow jeered, giving Ichigo a look that would have melted the flesh from the bones of a lesser person.

“What are you even talking about?” Ichigo bellowed, hysteria finally taking root in his chest just below his sternum, something ice cold and razor-sharp. “Stop, just _stop,_ and talk to me.”

_Where have you been? How do you know about Ulquiorra? Why does your reiatsu feel different? What do you mean, I lied to you? How do you not know that it’s been over a year since anybody has seen you? Where have you been?_

**_Where have you been?_ **

Grimmjow opened his mouth, hand tightening on the grip of his sword like he was planning to spear Ichigo through again, when a flat beam of yellow light struck him through the chest. His eyes went saucer-wide, and Ichigo couldn’t tell if it was in shock or sudden pain, as another two rays sluiced through him until he was standing in a star of paralyzing light. It was a visceral reaction, Ichigo’s body moving on its own accord, flashing forward to reach him, only to be shoved aside with a harsh shoulder that sent him skidding back.

Urahara raised a hand and put it flat to Grimmjow’s face and there was only the white flash of Grimmjow’s eyes as they rolled back into his head before his body buckled, collapsing into the waiting arms of Tessai. The yellow light dispersed as though it had been shattered, shards of it drifting off before dissipating completely.

“What are you doing!?” Ichigo cried out, watching Tessai lower Grimmjow’s unconscious form to the dirt with surprising gentleness as Urahara cast a large, black blanket over his body. Grimmjow’s reiatsu was snuffed out immediately, not a trace of it lingering in the air to brush against Ichigo’s skin.

“Trying to corral this clusterfuck of a situation.”

Ichigo came up short, every emotion that was roiling inside him coming to a screeching halt as though someone had finally engaged the brakes. He’d never heard Urahara curse, at least not like that. Like a ping-pong match, his eyes darted between Urahara who crouched over Grimmjow’s hidden body briefly and Tessai, whose neck was striped with already purpling bruises, each line the very clear imprint of Grimmjow’s long fingers.

“Wh-what did you do to him?”

“Just a little kido to knock him out.” Urahara reached up to adjust his hat, tilting it back enough to look at Ichigo. “I don’t want the sensors alerting anyone else to the presence of his reiatsu.”

The adrenalin of the events was ebbing out of him rapidly, and Ichigo closed his eyes for a moment as a wave of dizziness swept over him. He needed to sit down, _now,_ before he collapsed and ended up knocking his own teeth in. Gracelessly, Ichigo dropped to his knees, sitting back onto his heels, dropping his swords at his sides. He stared, shellshocked, at the swath of black cloth that covered Grimmjow, a tuft of blue hair sticking out near the top, the sight of it driving a hysterical giggle out of him at the sheer impossibility of it all. He reached up and scrubbed his hands down over his face, driving the heels of his palms into his eyes. Pain was thundering behind his eyeballs, swelling to migraine-like proportions.

“He’s alive,” he breathed into his shaking hands, the words sending a zing of complicated relief through him, right down to his toes.

“So it would seem,” Urahara replied, and Ichigo could hear the disbelief so plain in his voice that he dropped his hands to look at his old mentor.

“How was he even able to open a Garganta here?” Ichigo asked, trying to tamp down the urge to crawl over to Grimmjow’s body, to pull the blanket out, to check, to be sure this wasn’t still some awful dream.

“The sensors are only beholden to the reiatsus that were keyed into it. It can’t track a not-so-dead guy that we didn’t account for.” Urahara leaned heavily on his sword. “He’s the least of our problems right now.”

“ _How?_ ”

“Would you like the bad news or the worse news first?” When Ichigo only stared at him in stupefied silence, Urahara took a deep breath. “Nel checked in and said she found something.”

“And?” Ichigo demanded, knowing that couldn’t possibly be the worse news.

“And the energy readings in Hueco Mundo have just dropped to unstable levels.”

**~**

Just gentle blackness, still comforting, still welcoming, but hauntingly silent. Grimmjow could no longer feel the thrum of the sand, the radiant energy of something so much more powerful than him wrapping itself around him like a cocoon. Was he missing time, lost somewhere between dreaming of his blood spilling out in the moonlight? A day, maybe, a dawning of a day he didn’t witness, too busy slipping out of his bones and slithering into the soul, into the memories, of someone else? But not a year. He felt unbearably light, suspended somehow, and he wanted to relax into it again, let go, but he couldn’t. He was here for a _reason,_ he got up for a reason. To prove a point to Kurosaki that he was a force to be reckoned with, that a broken vow had to be paid in blood. But Kurosaki had just stared at him, strangely, openly, like he was already bleeding out before Grimmjow had even had the chance to deal decent damage.

Quiet, so quiet, but the buzz of a warm palm cradling his face with startling tenderness was utterly deafening.


	5. In Search of Solid Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys sure know how to make a girl feel spoiled. Your comments inspire me to keep writing. Thank you. ❤️❤️❤️

**~**

**  
**_“Y. That perfect letter._  
 _The wishbone, fork in the road, empty wineglass._  
 _The question we ask over and over.”_

Marjorie Celona, **Y**  
  


**~**

There was a prickle of power across Grimmjow’s skin, rising and fading like the gust of a soft breeze. It was gentle, guided by a surprisingly benevolent hand. He wanted to resist, to push back against that power, it would be so damn _easy_ to crush something so gentle. But something was holding him back, something thin but strong, smothering him, keeping him under. It couldn’t hold him forever. There’d be an opening, but it would be all he’d need. He only needed a moment to raze everything to the ground anyway. 

Kurosaki had used that move against him again, the same one that had given him the scar on his chest. Getsuga Tenshou, that black flash of power, so potent that every time he faced it, it felt like the first time. In the back of his throat, it still tasted like his own blood dripping from the head wound it had caused all those years ago. But this time it had lacked depth, it had lacked _resolve_. Kurosaki had thrown it as him with all the fuckin’ commitment of a child, hurling it with no purpose. It had been _weak_ , hadn’t even scratched his hierro. Kurosaki was supposed to be some overpowered spiritual abomination, so where the hell was all that power? Where the hell were those eyes he hated so much, sharper even than the blade they wielded.

He’d been willing to ignore Kisuke’s jab about looking good for a dead guy, knew him well enough to know that the shady Shinigami liked to fuck with people. But Kurosaki was different, had always been honest, straightforward, no bullshit in the same way Grimmjow was. At least, he’d thought so until he’d seen Ulquiorra’s memory of the full mask with the horns. Maybe all Shinigami were deceitful fuckers and Grimmjow was the stupid one who was gullible enough to believe that some of them had to have a sense of honor. What was the point of jerking him around like that? They were all just in on the bad joke, weren’t they? All those Shinigami assholes trying to pull the wool over his eyes. And, alright, he’d ditched them all in the Soul Palace to escape to Hueco Mundo, but he definitely hadn’t _died._ He’d know if he’d actually bit the dust because he wouldn’t be here now. A year, yeah fuckin’ right.

But Kurosaki— he had looked at Grimmjow like he was being forced to witness one of his obnoxious friends get gutted. Wide-eyed, _horrified,_ insisting that Grimmjow had been _dead_ , actually fucking dead. And Kurosaki had looked different, sort of. His hair was a little longer than he remembered. He hadn’t been carrying himself with all that cavalier confidence he usually had. And his eyes— _his eyes._ Quiet, somehow, when they had always been loud before. Everything about Kurosaki was fucking _loud_ ; his hair, his eyes, his smart mouth, his ridiculously large sword— or, well, two swords now, and what the hell was up with that? Subdued, that was the word Grimmjow was looking for. Like everything was crushing him all at once. In fact, the only loud thing about Kurosaki other than him shouting had been the five different shades of black and blue under those quiet eyes, visible even from several paces away. It had even seemed like they’d darkened further at the mention of Ulquiorra.

Just what drove a Shinigami like Kurosaki Ichigo to exhaustion? Grimmjow ached to find out.

**~**

Ichigo accepted the cold compress from Yoruichi with mumbled thanks, smacking it against his forehead and sighing in relief. He leaned back against the makeshift wall behind him and closed his eyes for a moment, settling into the soothing cold against his ragingly hot skin. A mere three feet away, a complicated pattern of purple kido tracking up his muscled forearms, Tessai stood over Grimmjow’s still unconscious form as he let his hands hover a few inches above his chest. Resting on what looked all for the world like a cadaver table made of orange kido, Ichigo stared at Grimmjow’s face, so relaxed in sleep that even the seemingly ever-permanent snarl between his brows had smoothed out. He looked so… _young._ Ichigo had no idea how old Grimmjow actually was, how old any of the arrancar or Espada had been. He had all the concentrated angst of a teenager, but so did Ichigo sometimes, so he supposed that wasn’t a very good factor for carbon dating.

“Where are Ururu and Jinta?” he asked suddenly, realizing that his headcount from earlier had actually come up short and that he wasn’t just ludicrously dehydrated and confused.

“Training with Hiyori. They usually do on the weekends,” Yoruichi said casually as if that wasn’t that most insane thing he’d ever heard.

“You’re letting them train with her? She’s a _slave driver_ ,” Ichigo exclaimed, scandalized, the memory of her makeshift ‘super walker’ plaguing him like war flashbacks.

“They could use some discipline and structure.”

Well, that’s not at all what Ichigo would have called Hiyori’s approach to training whatsoever. Yoruichi didn’t seem to share the same opinion, wordlessly depositing the bottles of water she had in her arms at his feet before exiting the barrier. Urahara was upstairs, tinkering away with his little world divider, muttering under his breath as he pushed buttons and twisted dials. It was all above Ichigo’s pay-grade and he had no intention of asking what they all did and if he could help because he knew he’d never get a straight answer.

He slid the cold compress down, balancing it on one side of his neck where sweat was starting to accumulate and stooped over to grab one of the water bottles Yoruichi had left. He was warm in his shihakusho and there seemed to be no airflow within the barrier, but he’d be damned if he left it now. The cold water helped a little. He pushed off from the kido wall to stand at the head of the table and watch Tessai work. The hand that wasn’t holding the cold compress to his skin he kept firmly tucked behind his back, knowing the temptation to reach out again and confirm that Grimmjow was actually corporeal, that this was all still real and he wasn’t still having some hellish nightmare, was still strong.

“What exactly are you doing?” Ichigo finally asked, after staring with fascination at the purple kido that pulsed along Tessai’s arms, looking almost like blut vene but with more organic lines.

“Diagnostic kido, Mr. Kurosaki,” Tessai replied, as polite as he always was. He didn’t once look away as he moved his hands down the space above Grimmjow’s left arm from shoulder to fingertips at a glacial pace.

Ichigo blinked. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

“It is a kido that Mr. Hachigen and I have been developing and refining over the last year.” Tessai walked round the end of the table to stand at Grimmjow’s right arm to begin the same process. “It is meant to analyze the nuances of a spiritual being’s reiatsu and reiryoku, to detect changes and fluctuations.”

Fuckin’ _rad_ , Ichigo thought, though the theoretical concept of it kind of boggled him, watching it in action was awesome. “How would you know if there’s been a change? You’ve never met Grimmjow before, have you?”

“No, but Mr. Urahara has. He analyzed and manipulated Mr. Jaegerjaquez’s reiatsu in Hueco Mundo before the siege of the Soul Palace.”

Ichigo was floored, looking away from Tessai a little helplessly to cast a glance at Grimmjow’s still sleeping face. “He _what?_ ”

Why was there so much shit Ichigo didn’t know? Why did people insist on keeping him out of all these loops all the time? He might have been delirious with pain and the lingering effects of strong alcohol at the time, but he hadn’t missed the way that Grimmjow had called his old mentor _Kisuke,_ not Urahara, earlier. And the way he’d addressed Yoruichi casually too. There was quite a bit of story there between the three of them that he was missing. Absently, he wondered if Inoue would tell him. He’d never even thought to ask her before, about her and Sado’s time in Hueco Mundo after Ichigo had left to fight off the sternritters invading Soul Society.

“It was how we were able to determine that the Quincies would not steal an arrancar’s Resurrección and how we were able to create the Shineiyaku, a pill given to those with bankai to hollowfy their bankai’s to poison the Quincies who had stolen them and guard against future attempts.”

“You were able to do all of that… because of _Grimmjow_?” To say he was astounded would have been the understatement of the century. He knew now that his weird amalgamation of inner spiritual entities was the only thing that had saved his bankai from being snatched, but no one had told him that they’d been able to reverse those that had. And absolutely no one had told him that they’d been able to accomplish all of that because of _Grimmjow fucking Jaegerjaquez._

“Mr. Jaegerjaquez offered a small amount of his reiatsu so that the pills could be created and brought to the Soul Society, and Mr. Urahara was therefore able to study it in detail. I’m relying on his observations to detect changes now.” Tessai was moving at the same glacially slow pace, following the curvature of Grimmjow’s elbow and down to his exposed forearm. Ichigo could see then and there that the Getsuga Tenshou he’d blasted at him earlier had done literally nothing, there wasn’t even a mark on Grimmjow’s skin to say he’d ever thrown all that power aside, bare-handed.

“He offered?” Ichigo parroted, voice heavy with disbelief.

That was nothing short of an information overload, all of which Ichigo hadn’t the faintest idea that it had happened. This had to be an alternate timeline of some sort. He couldn’t even imagine Grimmjow agreeing to a situation that essentially made him a guinea pig at the hands of Urahara Kisuke. Ichigo tried to picture Grimmjow sitting still, patient and silent, as Urahara asked needlingly specific questions and worked as fast as he could without error.

Tessai’s brow furrowed, mustache bristling slightly as he hovered over Grimmjow’s sword-calloused fingers, relaxed and loose, the bones in the back of his hand looking strangely delicate beneath his pale skin. “It is my understanding that Miss. Nelliel offered first, but the fluctuation of her forms made studying her reiatsu too difficult under the time constraints.”

Ichigo supposed that there had to be a pretty sizable different in the reiatsu between toddler Nel and Nel as her full-grown self. Was that why Urahara had made her the bracelet? Was it all some sort of long con so that he could study her too? One that hadn’t paid off since everyone had been forbidden under the penalty of excruciating pain and punishment from crossing between the worlds. Though he may have had his exile lifted, Ichigo wondered just how much Urahara had lost as a result of Soul Society’s decree. Not only that, but how just _how much_ was there that Ichigo didn’t know? All the events that had unfolded beyond the scope of his awareness. What had happened after Ichigo had been shut into the Garganta? How had Grimmjow and Urahara even run into each other? Hueco Mundo was enormous, even Nel’s year-long search from Grimmjow hadn’t produced any information, except maybe whatever map she’d been making to track her progress. And what good was a map anyway in a world full of shifting sand that could change from one day to the next? Had they found Grimmjow or had Grimmjow found them?

Tessai uncoiled to his proper, staggering height, the purple kido twining his arms like vines dispersing slowly. He readjusted his glasses to sit properly on the bridge of his nose before looking squarely at Ichigo. “I have found a substantial anomaly in Mr. Jaegerjaquez’s reiryoku.”

“How… substantial?” Like an electric shock, Tessai’s words jumpstarted Ichigo’s pulse, sending it charging down his arms.

With a flick of his wrist, Tessai produced a white ribbon from thin air, pulling it through his other hand until it lay flat in both of his palms. Reiraku, a technique Ichigo was familiar with and only relatively shit at, which was saying a whole lot considering he couldn’t perform _any_ kido like the average Shinigami. He did know that only Shinigami spirit ribbons were red, anything else was white. Naturally, Grimmjow’s was white, but the bolt of black that ran through the center of the ribbon like a line of charred fabric sent something awful and acidic curling in Ichigo’s gut. That absolutely wasn’t supposed to be there, he knew that much.

“I do not know what this power is that has lain itself into his spirit ribbon, but I don’t believe they can be separated.”

Oh fucking hell, that couldn’t be good.

“It doesn’t feel malevolent. In fact, it doesn’t feel like anything at all.” Tessai murmured as he traced a finger down the line of black curiously. “I’ve never seen this before.”

Ichigo didn’t like the sound of that at all. Absently, he took a step closer to the kido table, setting a hand down on it to steady himself, feeling the ambient warmth of both it and Grimmjow. He didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? Ichigo had been sort of right; Grimmjow’s reiatsu had felt different, not _wrong,_ but different. Ichigo had always vaguely associated Grimmjow’s reiatsu with the feeling of being under a weighted blanket. The sensation of weight settled across his entire body that was anything but uncomfortable, deceiving in the lull of its pressure. For such a loud asshole, Grimmjow’s power had always surprised Ichigo in how it had always seemed to quietly stalk up on him, silent and predatory until it was too late. It was hard to tell if it was purposeful, if Grimmjow was good at squashing his reiatsu signature down until he was nigh on top of someone, or if it was natural. But now, it felt like a hand around his throat, an unforgiving vice with one purpose.

Tessai interrupted his spiraling reverie with a gentle voice. “Could I bother you to fetch me Mr. Jaegerjaquez’s sword? I would like to inspect it as well.” Tessai lifted his always-there apron and swiped the sweat from his brow.

With a perfunctory nod, head still buzzing with the influx of new information, Ichigo watched Tessai release the ribbon before ambling towards the barrier’s exit, leaving his swords propped against the wall. There was never a breeze down in the wasteland that was the bunker but the air outside of the barrier felt immediately cooler against his clammy skin. A stab of guilt went through Ichigo as he caught the glint of steel lying in the dirt. It didn’t seem right that they’d left Grimmjow’s sword out here, so far away from his body, even if he was unconscious and unaware. Ichigo knew he’d panic if someone took Zangetsu from him without his consent. He squatted down and stared at it, trying to see if there were any changes to the sword itself. But, if he was being honest with himself, Ichigo had never really paid much attention to Grimmjow’s sword, only enough to maybe recognize the guard and the woven blue grip of it, but those were cursory observances. He hadn’t studied it the way he’d studied Grimmjow across a dusty battlefield, sword released and body plated in white bone. Lithe and leggy, danger in every wickedly sharp line of him.

Shaking the memory from his head, Ichigo reached down hesitantly. He’d never held another person’s sword before, not Rukia’s or Renji’s. He knew what it felt like to cross blades with someone, to feel the whisper of their true feelings through that contact. He was afraid that holding another person’s sword, the way they would hold it, would be a deeply unpleasant and intrusive experience. With fingers he didn’t even bother to get to stop shaking, Ichigo reached down and picked up Pantera by her grip. His first reaction was that she was unfairly well-balanced, as though he could poise her by the flat of her blade on the tip of his finger and she wouldn’t teeter. He’d never really had anything to compare Zangetsu to before now, but now he was gonna have a serious talk with the old man the next time he meditated about how the form of his zanpakuto had always been some unwieldy monstrosity up until they’d been reforged. Then, the rush hit him.

Desperation, thick like clotted blood, settled in Ichigo’s chest. Desperate to be stronger because weakness meant death. Desperate to be useful because worthlessness meant abandonment and regression. Desperate to destroy because that was the only purpose that had been given. Destroy it, destroy them, destroy bonds, destroy yourself if that was all that remained. Soul-deep, festering desperation stole up Ichigo’s arm, spreading from his hand, the point of contact with Grimmjow’s sword that he meant to drop as those sentiments crept into his heart, but his fingers wouldn’t let go.

Coupled with the rage and the solitude, the cocktail of emotions that was Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez felt like a deathblow.

But Ichigo knew those feelings all too well. The feeling of despair that he wasn’t enough, would _never_ be enough, as a son, as a brother, as a friend, as a Shinigami, as everybody’s supposed savior. The loneliness of that blind drive for power, for strength, for some kind of clarity amidst it all. And the rage when people didn’t understand, wouldn’t help, when it wasn’t _enough_. There was something else too, something that lingered under all of that potency that Ichigo also recognized; the barely burning flame of hope that there had to be something _more_. Whether it was out there in the world somewhere or deep inside himself in a place he hadn’t searched yet. That there had to be a purpose, a meaning to the suffering, some sort of significance to all the pain he’d had to bear thus far.

A zing ricocheted through Ichigo’s nerves at the familiarity of it all and he couldn’t stop the smile that quirked at one corner of his mouth. Grimmjow was a complicated guy under all the bluster and bloodlust, locked up tighter than a bank vault. Ichigo didn’t really have to wonder if Grimmjow had ever trusted anybody before in his short —or possibly long, who was he to say really— life. You didn’t feel like undiluted death all the time if you had people to trust.

It didn’t strike him until he was standing and striding back towards the kido barrier, staring down at the sword in his hands, that there was no way that any of this was going to end well. Tessai and Urahara would analyze Grimmjow, and then what? They’d have to let him wake up eventually, at least to offer an explanation. Then what? Was Grimmjow just going to be allowed to roam free? And by roam free, Ichigo absolutely meant free to hunt him to the ends of the Living World until he got whatever his idea of a fair fight was. Or would they send him back to Hueco Mundo? Were they going to have to tell Soul Society that he was alive, well, and definitely a menace to at least a few people? That was bound to go over poorly no matter how they pitched it. What the fuck was Ichigo even supposed to say after someone explained everything to Grimmjow? _Hey, I’m really sorry you dipped out on everybody instead of letting yourself be healed, and I’m really sorry that I couldn’t come looking for you because Soul Society did what Soul Society does best and just about ball-and-chained me to the Living World? And oh, I touched your sword and got a little insight into you as a person and not some frontline-fodder mercenary of an ex-Shinigami with a god complex and it turns out we have an unsettling amount of shit in common? Also, I missed your—_

“Ah, Kurosaki-san!” came Urahara’s voice and Ichigo jerked his head up just in time to stop himself from colliding with him. He was holding a stack of papers in one hand and his cane-sheathed sword in the other. “I have all the news from Nel about her findings and the state of Hueco Mundo.”

“Good news only,” Ichigo ground out, all but throwing his arms up to form an X and ward off anymore bullshit. He was hot, exhausted, anxious beyond all belief, and dreading having to return to his butchered human body eventually.

Urahara’s expression didn’t falter as he ruffled the papers in his hand. “How about acceptable news?”

“Fine,” Ichigo conceded, knowing he was asking for too much anyway. “Is Nel okay?”

Urahara nodded. “Both her and Harribel are safe by her account, no overt damage was done.”

Ichigo scowled at that careful word choice. “What covert damage was done then?”

“Ah, that is where I’m not quite sure.” Urahara presented the paperwork in his hand so that Ichigo could see an array of seismograph lines stretching across the top page, one of them plunging down at the edge. “These lines represent the reiatsu signature of Nel and Harribel respectively, and Hueco Mundo as a whole. Hueco Mundo suffered a massive loss because of the sternritters but has been holding steady and incrementally increasing over the last year as they’ve rebuilt. I don’t know what caused this severe dip, though I have a sneaking suspicion.”

Ichigo glanced at the kido barrier and back to the page held out to him. “Well, we’re all in luck then. Tessai thinks he found something.”

“Is that so!” Urahara beamed, standing up a little straighter even. He began to turn towards the barrier and the occupants within but Ichigo reached out with his free hand and smacked the papers in his hand.

“What did Nel find?” Ichigo demanded as Urahara glanced at Grimmjow’s sword in his hand and then up to his face, looking at him in his quiet, dissecting way. “Obviously not all these funny lines.”

“Nel has found a crater of sorts, out in a very remote part of Hueco Mundo, rather far from what remains of Las Noches, if her maps are accurate.” Urahara said, scratching at his scruffy cheek, wrinkling the papers in his grasp as he did so. “Do you know what fulgurite is, Kurosaki-san?”

Ichigo gave him a bored look. Studying rocks hadn’t exactly been high on his list of important hobbies to master over the last several years.

“It is the result of lightning discharging into the ground. It vaporizes and melts sand and forms these very artful, glassy tubes that look a little bit like the shape of the lightning bolt.” He gesticulated in an attempt to imitate the size of what he was talking about. “It takes upwards of one hundred million volts to create even tiny ones, really a spectacular amount of power.”

“And, what? She found a crater full of them?” Ichigo asked, not quite following Urahara’s line of explanation. He studied his former mentor’s warm, grey eyes, as though he was going to find more straightforward answers there.

“Actually, she found a tomb,” Urahara said as if that wasn’t the most outrageous thing to ever come out of his mouth. “Sort of. She described it as a large sandbank that had been gouged out and a field of fulgurite covering the center of it. And what looked like the petrified outline of where a body had lain.”

The feeling that erupted in Ichigo’s chest and spread until it tingled in the tips of his fingers could only be described as dread. But a special kind of dread, like watching a horror movie and knowing a jump scare was coming but having no ability to prepare for it and getting absolutely floored by it nonetheless. Anticipatory dread. He tightened his fingers reflexively on the grip of Pantera as he tried to picture the scene Urahara was describing. The image that echoed back at him was just the sprawl of white sands and the desolate black sky above, infinite and isolated. He glowered down at the steel for a moment: if she knew anything at all, she was certainly giving nothing away.

“She said the entire area was permeated by Grimmjow’s reiatsu, so it feels safe to assume that maybe that’s where he’s been all this time.” Urahara watched Ichigo digest that information with a blanked-out expression. “It would help to go and see it for myself, but our hands are tied.”

Ichigo swallowed down his trepidation and stared at the sword in his hand. The desperation and rage and solitude were still churning in his gut, demanding to be felt, but Ichigo was too burnt out to process it all properly. Not only that but the fact that Grimmjow _knew about Ulquiorra_ was still pressing on his mind, threatening to overshadow almost everything. One mammoth task at a time, he reminded himself. Handle what he could now and sort through the rest later. “Are they going to be okay? Nel and Harribel?”

“For now. At the memorial, I had supplied them with centering poles full of reiatsu, a bit like the edgeless zanpakuto Miss. Kuchiki stabbed you with to return your Shinigami powers. When driven into the ground and activated, they will emit that reiatsu until they are empty.”

Ichigo fixed Urahara with a wary look, absently rubbing his thumb across the woven pattern of Pantera’s grip. “And that’s gonna help stabilize Hueco Mundo?”

“Yes, but only for a short while. They only have so much reiatsu contained in them and I was only able to make a few. They are a temporary respite.” _We’re wasting time,_ was all Ichigo heard in that sentence. Every moment they spent not trying to find a way to help Nel and Harribel could mean disaster.

“Should we be contacting the Soul Society about all this?” Ichigo asked quietly once Urahara had his back to him.

Urahara paused, glancing briefly over his shoulder at Ichigo and the sword that was still clutched in his hands. Ichigo, with all the irony the situation could possibly allow, looked like death warmed up. Exhausted with semi-slouched shoulders and such heavy bags under his eyes that Urahara yearned to make a bellhop joke about them, but knew it would be ill-timed. Ichigo did well, usually, to hide that weariness behind a warm smile and some reassuring words, but everyone in the shoten shop, Urahara included, could see that the disguise was getting harder to wear. As far as he knew, Ichigo had never talked to anyone about his final battle with Yhwach, about what had transpired. And with communication with the Gotei 13 limited as it was, no one had been able to ask Renji about it either. Urahara had poked and prodded in his quiet, careful way, asking Inoue for assistance to no avail, conscripting Ishida without success, and recruiting Sado without fruition. He knew Isshin would never press his son for information, and he’d eventually reached a dead end. Ichigo needed to process that trauma and find closure. They were safe, the war was won, and there were no looming threats of extinction presently. If that development required a little blue-haired, forceful persuasion, Urahara wasn’t above such methods.

“Only after we’ve exhausted all our other avenues.” With a swish of his coat, Urahara strode towards the barrier. “The less bureaucracy I have put up with today, the better.” In silent agreement, Ichigo followed after and back into the sweltering room of the barrier.

“Sorry for the delay,” Ichigo apologized, holding the sword out for Tessai, who dispelled the purple kido coiling up his arms once more. When he didn’t immediately take it from Ichigo, he began to feel a bit awkward, glancing between it, Tessai, and Urahara in a loop.

“I think it’s best to return it now,” Tessai said gently, gesturing to the empty sheath still clipped to Grimmjow’s white belts. “I believe I’ve gleaned all I can without it.”

He stepped aside to give Ichigo space, accepting the papers held out to him by Urahara without comment. Ichigo grasped the sheath and slid Pantera home, settling her at gently Grimmjow’s side, careful not to jostle anything, and stepped back. The weight that left his chest on his next exhale was immediately noticeable, like something had been sitting on it. God, did Grimmjow walk around feeling like that _all the time_? No wonder he always looked like someone had pissed in his Cheerios.

“Though it’s difficult to quantify, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Mr. Jaegerjaquez has experienced an influx of power of unknown origin,” Tessai declared, looking up from the seismograph readings.

“Wonderful!” Urahara exclaimed with all of his usual, semi-creepy cheer. “Shall we wake and interrogate him?”

“ _What?_ ” Ichigo damn near screeched, nearly falling face forward in his attempt to grab another bottle of water. “That’s a terrible idea! He’s gonna nuke this place when he wakes up and finds out _you_ knocked him out in the middle of his grudge match with _me_.”

“Shall we give you two some space then?” Urahara teased, tone light, eyes harder to read behind the readjusted tilt of his hat.

Ichigo just gaped at him like a floundering fish. “Only if you want this to turn into a bloodbath. Where’s Yoruichi? She’s neutral territory, right? Make her do it.”

“Yoruichi-san is indisposed trying to make sure our unwelcome guest’s appearance has not alerted the Soul Society." Oh hell no, Ichigo thought vehemently as he watched Urahara's smile widen. "Tessai and Grimmjow-san aren’t really acquainted and he’ll likely be unhappy to see me since I, as you said, knocked him out.”

Ichigo started after Urahara with the intention of grabbing ahold of his coat and shaking some sense into him, literally. Like the little conniving sneak that he was though, Urahara took a half-step to the side so that he was nearly standing behind Tessai and Ichigo came up short. Tessai he would never fuck with unless he was blind out of his head. He didn’t know the extent of the former Kido Corp Lieutenant’s powers to be reckless enough to pick a fight with him. And Urahara knew that, the smarmy bastard. Just the way he was smiling out from around Tessai’s arm said it all.

“You leave me in here with him and you get to bring my body back to my dad and explain yourself,” Ichigo stated, voice hard.

If anything, that threat made Urahara step out from behind Tessai just a little bit. “I would like to know how he managed to find us so quickly. And how he tore through all the shop’s wards the way he did.” The thoughtful twinkle in Urahara’s eye spelled Ichigo’s doom, he just knew it. “Asking couldn’t possibly hurt.”

“Who the hell cares!” Ichigo exclaimed, throwing his hands up in defeat, feeling his patience fraying and his anxiety ratcheting up. “Probably with his hands and teeth like some sort of barbarian!”

“Fuck you, Kurosaki, I’m not an animal.”

Ichigo whirled around, nearly toppling over with the force of his movement, the sudden sound of Grimmjow’s voice damn near kicking his heart into the back of his throat in shock. _You fucking rat bastard,_ Ichigo seethed in Urahara’s direction, wishing for once that looks could actually kill.

Grimmjow was sitting upright on the kido table, the relaxed expression of his face while asleep slipping away fast, crumpling up into his normal scowl. Blue hair was straggling across his brow, mussed from when Urahara had put him under. He looked mildly disoriented, as if being forcefully knocked out and kept under by kido for so long had thrown him for a moment, but it was fading quickly. He was still glaring, bottle-glass blue eyes sharp and narrowed as they darted between the three of them before he settled that blistering gaze on Ichigo. There was the brief jolt in Grimmjow’s shoulders as he reached to his side, his hand immediately finding Pantera’s hilt. The instant relief was visible in the sight of the tension easing from his body slightly, but not much.

Grimmjow glanced down at his hands as if he was expecting to find something wrong and flexed his fingers a little. “Not hard to track something that leaks out enough reiatsu to down a Menos all the damn time.”

The silence in the small room of the kido barrier was fucking palpable as Grimmjow seemed to catalog the state of his body before leveling Ichigo with another mean glare. Ichigo was staring, gaping really, as Grimmjow swung his long legs to the edge of the table and hopped off, the metal adorning his boots clinking as his feet met the hard earth. Because they were both awake now, and it was broad daylight, and the alcohol had run its course in Ichigo’s body, there was nothing clouding his vision as he stared at the ex-Espada. Ichigo was regretting having returned Pantera to Grimmjow now. Maybe it was better if they’d left her out of his reach, he might have lived longer.

“You can track reiatsu that well?” Ichigo blurted out, incredulous. Why was everyone, even his sworn rival, so much better at average skills than he was?

Grimmjow just sneered at him, lip curling to flash a sharp incisor. “Don’t insult me. That’s Gillian level shit.” The ferocious grin that split his face next was heralded only by the faint breeze at Ichigo’s back that told him he’d just been abandoned by two very capable Shinigami, whom he internally vowed to murder later if he survived this. This was a fucking conspiracy, he didn’t even have his swords within reach for crying out loud.

“I—” Ichigo stuttered ungracefully as he took a step backward in the direction of his swords. _Why, why was this his life?_

“C’mon, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow taunted with a wicked gleam in his eyes, his hand already drifting to the hilt of his sword. “‘Asking couldn’t possibly hurt.’”


	6. Between the Substrata

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 5K of pure, steaming garbage. You're welcome ❤️  
> Comments fuel my dumpster fire, please and thank you. A re-upload cuz some shit was wonky.

**~**

_“Dear Universe,_ _  
Give me something to burn for.”_

**Melissa Kennedy**

**~**

The kido barrier that Tessai had created had felt suffocating in its smallness, like the false walls and ceiling were constantly closing in. Maybe it was all the reiatsu it had been trying to contain that had made it feel so tiny. But now it felt like it had all collapsed in on Ichigo, pink wavering at his periphery like a threat. The biggest threat, of course, was in front of him, raking back his disheveled hair with a long-fingered hand until less of it was hanging in his eyes, and drawing his sword in one clean movement. It was the most casually Ichigo had ever been threatened in all his many years and god damn him if it also wasn’t slightly distracting.

Grimmjow was no longer glowing, for lack of a better word. The visible scar tissue that marked his chest was no longer slightly blue and he didn’t seem to be shedding reiryoku anymore like he had been when he’d come stabbing his way into the shoten shop. Ichigo wasn’t sure if this was Tessai’s doing or if Grimmjow’s spiritual pressure had leveled out by itself. Either way, Ichigo was unarmed and Grimmjow was far too close. And if the last few demonstrations were anything to go by, even flash stepping across the small space wouldn’t get him to his swords any faster than Grimmjow would fillet him.

And Grimmjow still looked angry enough to stab him, but he also looked _tired_. In the stark, false daylight and with nothing more than a headache debilitating him now, Ichigo could see dark circles under Grimmjow’s eyes. Smears of faint purple-black that made the teal of his estigma look like something that had been painted over it. Tomb, Urahara had said there was a tomb in Hueco Mundo, out in butt-fuck-nowhere. And maybe Grimmjow hadn’t actually _died_ , but it certainly didn’t look like he’d _slept_ in the last fourteen months either. At least that playing field was even, Ichigo thought though it didn’t give him much respite considering Grimmjow was ready to fight all out again.

Ichigo read the twitch of the arrancar’s fingers and threw his hands up like a teenager getting caught in the sudden headlights of a cop car. “It’s not gonna be equal,” he blurted out, desperate for a way out of the imminent pain.

“Is that so?” Grimmjow taunted, raising a single eyebrow in challenge. Ichigo scowled a little, not because Grimmjow wasn’t believing a word of it, but because he could raise one eyebrow, something his father had always done to dress him down when they were having a stupid disagreement, something Ichigo could never figure out how to do no matter how long he spent staring at himself in the mirror some mornings. It was a stupid thing to focus in on, he knew that, but it just managed to bring his agitation to a head.

“You stabbed my human body, Grimmjow!” he exclaimed, keeping his hands and arms in full view so that his actions could in no way be misconstrued. “That shit carries over, you know.” It absolutely didn’t, but Grimmjow didn’t need to know that.

Grimmjow appraised him with narrowed, wary eyes that flickered to his clothed shoulder and back to his face. There was a pacification building in his pinched expression, so Ichigo tried to push it further.

“I’m tired, I’m hungover, some batshit asshole tried to shish kabab my very fragile body. You’re basically an international fugitive that everybody thinks is dead.” The angry flare of nostrils and the jump of muscles in a chiseled jaw said he was barking up the wrong tree. “You’re angry, okay, I know. You think I lied, but I didn’t. There’s a lot going on that you’re not up to speed with and if you go swinging your sword and alerting the wrong people, we’re all screwed.”

“Fine then,” Grimmjow said casually, like Ichigo had just helped make the situation so much easier. He speared Pantera point down into the earth as Ichigo watched with wide eyes and reached to cuff the left sleeve of his jacket back further before doing the same to the right sleeve.

“Are you serious?” Ichigo cringed as Grimmjow curled his right hand into a tight fist, cracking a few knuckles. “Is this Fight Club? We're not about to duke this out with our bare hands.”

“We absolutely fucking are, you son of a bitch,” Grimmjow snapped, taking a bold step away from his sword and closer to Ichigo. His molten blue gaze didn’t waver, the snarl building across the bridge of his fined-boned nose. “Every one of my questions you don’t answer outright, I’m gonna clock you. Ready?” Tilting his head sharply to one side, Ichigo heard a couple of the vertebrae in Grimmjow’s neck pop. He still didn’t move as Grimmjow advanced even closer, rolling his shoulders back into his usual relaxed slouch as if having what amounted to a brawl in a back alley was an average day for him.

Maybe it was.

“ _Seriously_?” Ichigo managed to bite out before Grimmjow struck out with a punch that would have cold-cocked him in his human body. He took the brunt of those bony knuckles right to the jaw, head snapping so hard to the side that something in his own neck popped. Instinctively, Ichigo reached up to make sure skin hadn’t been broken and gave Grimmjow an indignant look.

The answering smile he received was smug, but there was still a suspicious tightness around Grimmjow’s narrowed eyes. “Answering a question with a question ain’t gonna cut it, Kurosaki.”

“You’re insane,” Ichigo hissed out as he cradled his jaw, just barely dodging the haymaker that came for his temple. “Okay, _yes,_ I’m ready, you asshole. What is your damage?”

“You are,” Grimmjow said openly, blunt as he always was, and wildly unaware of the twisted delight his answer sent straight to Ichigo’s heart. “Tryna tell me I was dead, lying to me, cheating me out of a good fight. The hell you guys trying to pull, huh?”

“We’re not!” Ichigo insisted for what felt like the umpteenth time as Grimmjow rolled his eyes so hard they probably saw the back of his skull. “We don’t have any reason to bullshit you. What do we gain telling you that you were supposed to be dead for the last fourteen months?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know?” Grimmjow grated out, circling Ichigo like some vulture eyeing its next meal.

Ichigo swung out, miming a punch to Grimmjow’s jaw that the other threw crossed arms up to block but driving his other fist into the arrancar’s diaphragm instead. He had to angle carefully so he didn’t put his hand unknowingly through Grimmjow’s hollow hole. The quietest huff of air escaped Grimmjow’s clenched teeth as he doubled over on reflex, glaring up at Ichigo between tendrils of blue hair. “Answering a question with a question ain’t gonna cut it, Jaegerjaquez,” Ichigo quoted snidely, unable to stop himself from grinning when Grimmjow did, though his couldn’t have looked as vicious.

The laugh that sounded like it had wrenched its way out of Grimmjow without his explicit permission seemed to echo within the confines of the small kido barrier. _Solid_ , was all that was running through Ichigo’s head alongside the sound of Grimmjow’s laugh. Tangible, corporeal, definitely _real,_ not a dream, no assortment of eyes watching him from the shadows that they both cast.

“Have you been in Hueco Mundo all this time?”

“Where else would I have gone? And don’t you fuckin’ start up about me being dead again.”

“Then what were you, Grimmjow?” Ichigo shouted, temper flaring for a moment as he struck out blindly, Grimmjow dodging with ease. “If you weren’t dead, then what were you doing? _Fourteen months_ , it’s not a joke. Nel has been searching for you since the war ended. There was a memorial! Your name is on a commemorative monument, you asshole.”

Furrowed brows shot up in surprise momentarily. “What now?”

“Don’t pick the one stupid thing to focus on, for shit's sake,” Ichigo commented, patience coming dangerously close to running out. He was getting nowhere with this line of questioning, but it was hard to tell if Grimmjow was being intentionally dense or genuinely didn’t know, the latter of which was worse somehow. How could you be not dead for over a year and not know? A coma? Could hollows even fall into comas?

“How do you know about Ulquoirra?” Ichigo demanded, drawing one foot back for better balance as Grimmjow walked a half-circle around him again, his tread utterly silent.

“The sand showed me.”

Ichigo swung out and Grimmjow ducked, but not fast enough. Ichigo’s knuckles grazed his chin, sending his neck snapping back as the punch half-connected. When Grimmjow’s head came forward again, a thin trickle of blood dripped down his chin.

“Stop fucking around!” he yelled as Grimmjow made a show of fondling his jaw like it had been dislocated before a pink tongue darted out to lick the blood from his lower lip. And if Ichigo tracked the entire movement, well it was because he was hyper-focused on avoiding a possible busted jaw himself for technically breaking the rules of their engagement.

“M’not. The sand showed me. She showed me a lot of things.”

That sentence interrupted Ichigo’s entire next train of thought. “ _She_?”

Grimmjow ignored him, choosing instead to crack a devilish grin that screamed trouble. “Does Kisuke know you’re a Vasto Lorde?”

Ichigo blanched. Having the fine details of the whole ordeal thrown into his face was doing nothing for his peace of mind. He could barely _remember_ what he’d done to Ulquiorra and Grimmjow not only knew what class of hollow Ichigo supposedly was, but wanted to know just who else knew his dirty secret. “No, god, I hope he doesn’t. Only Inoue and Ishida know. And now you too somehow. Which I’m still waiting for that answer unless you’re really in the mood for a black eye.”

“His name is White.”

Ichigo dropped his arms, the shock going through him with all the voltage of a defibrillator. Like he’d been electrocuted, everything in him short-circuited including all higher brain power and his reflexes. He had no reaction to Grimmjow’s fist coming at him and getting him squarely in the nose, knocking him flat on his back. With a muffled curse, he reached up to grab ahold of the appendage, fingers squeezing gently to make sure it hadn’t been broken. His eyes watered instinctively and his fingers came away wet with blood, but both of those things became the least of his problems as Grimmjow essentially straddled his waist, taking ahold of one of the straps of his shoulder guard in one hand and keeping the other one fisted and in plain sight.

Ichigo squinted up at Grimmjow, blinking tears from his eyes. He looked like one of those Renaissance paintings of angels, all oversaturated, the sun like a backlight behind his head, giving him a halo of daylight around his chaotic blue hair. Arctic eyes blazed down at him with all the ferocity of someone who held grudges like he was paid to. It was warm on either side of his hips were Grimmjow’s knees bracketed his torso keeping him effectively pinned. And his vision was nothing but Grimmjow, blue and white and black and pale skin, reiatsu washing over him in a burst, like the spray of sparks in a fire as a log collapsed.

“Why’d you only ever put on a fake mask when we fought?” Grimmjow demanded, hand that was fisted around the strap that crisscrossed his chest giving him a little shake. Pulling his hand from his nose briefly, Ichigo glared up at his opponent.

“It wasn’t fake!” he shot back, gagging around the mouthful of his own blood he was forced to swallow. It was that or spit it in Grimmjow’s looming face and he figured that’d go over poorly.

Bearing down as Ichigo tried to sit up and gain some semblance of control, Grimmjow snarled at him, “It never looked anything like what I saw! Why’s that, huh?”

There was a brief flash of conviction in Ichigo’s chest, that he wasn’t going to rise to the bait Grimmjow was dangling in front of him, no matter how beleaguered he felt physically or emotionally. But the flash was gone as quickly as it had come, evanescent, like lightning as it struck and disappeared. 

“Because I died!” he bellowed right into Grimmjow’s dumbstruck face. “I turned into that _thing_ because I _died._ Ulquoirra _killed me_.” The hand gripping his shihakusho went a little slack, as did Grimmjow’s expression, blue eyes widening, the stark, sleepless bruises under them looking like watercolor. “Did the sand show you that part?”

“Fuck you, Kurosaki!” Grimmjow responded out of what sounded like habit.

Blind with sudden rage, Ichigo reached up and fisted his hands in the lapels of Grimmjow’s jacket, planting his feet firmly on the ground and bucking up. He threw Grimmjow to the side and rolled over on top of him, driving a knee into his sternum again when he attempted to sit up, relishing the groan that Grimmjow let out. Ichigo kept a death grip on the jacket, smearing his own blood all across the white fabric, and gave a savage shove, lifting Grimmjow’s back from the earth only to slam him down again. “Did _she_ show you how I hurt my friends? How I almost decapitated him? _How I had no control?_ Or are you cherry-picking your way through that memory to get what you want?”

He glared murder down at the ex-Espada pinned beneath him, gaze wavering only briefly when his bloody nose dripped onto the white teeth of Grimmjow’s hollow mask and his chin, just below his lower lip. And god help him, he tried so hard not to react to the sight of Grimmjow’s tongue coming out again, this time to lap up Ichigo’s blood from his chin. It was an unconscious reaction, the way he tightened his grip on Grimmjow’s jacket to the point of tearing the cloth and leaned in a little. Blue eyes tracked his movement, half-lidded in focus but telegraphing an understandable amount of puzzlement. Grimmjow wasn’t say anything though, just smoldering up at him, eyebrows pinched together and a mild snarl wrinkling his brow and nose. He wasn’t even fighting back, Ichigo realized belatedly, just lying motionless under Ichigo’s weight. And Ichigo was acutely aware of the sharp jut of Grimmjow’s hipbones digging into his thighs, of the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, of one long-fingered hand that was wrapped around his ankle tight enough to bruise but doing nothing more than holding him there.

Ichigo hauled in a deep breath, bent his head back slightly and exhaled up at the ceiling of the shimmering, pink kido barrier. This couldn’t continue, this endless cycle of fighting and mind games. There were bigger things to work through then their tumultuous camaraderie. “Nel and Harribel, they’re in danger. So is Hueco Mundo. We— we can’t keep doing _this_. Soul Society is screwing everybody right now, even me. And we have to find a way to help Nel and Harribel.”

Grimmjow’s face screwed up like Ichigo had just told him a terrible joke and the fingers gripping his ankle stiffened. “Am I supposed to be surprised? You jump to their rescue often enough, so you must be into it.” Ichigo watched the flex of jaw muscle on one side as Grimmjow glowered up at him. “It’s always the end of the world with you fuckers.”

And, yeah, okay, maybe that was true, Ichigo could internally concede that much. It had just been one disaster after another as far as Soul Society was concerned. Each and every time though, Ichigo somehow got roped into their battles when really, he was doing things for his own reasons. Like saving Rukia, or Inoue. They had tried to corral him time and time again, only succeeding now because people far smarter than him had set up the roadblocks this time, outwitting the one guy he’d always counted on to have a loophole. The one that had helped him become a Shinigami not once but twice, had helped him break in to Hueco Mundo not once but twice.

Grimmjow wasn’t much different though, he thought with a jolt. Indentured to a system he hadn’t completely agreed to, defying authority at every turn to do what he wanted, what he probably thought was right. Ichigo wondered if Aizen knew what had become of his remaining Espada. If he knew that they’d all turned against him in the end, to aid the so-called enemy. It wasn’t exactly like he’d had time to discuss such things with the bastard during their final fight with Yhwach. But Aizen was smart, and scary strong to boot, he had to know, or at least have been able to sense that three of his best had decided if it meant saving their world, they would fight alongside the Shinigami.

“I thought you were my ally,” Ichigo stated, voice tighter than he wanted it to be. “I mean, our ally.” He loosened his grip a little on Grimmjow’s jacket, eyes darting to the blood he’d smeared all over it and that still spattered on Grimmjow’s chin, too low for him to have licked clean.

Grimmjow scoffed, looking to the side. “No, I’m your enemy,” he replied in a very _duh_ tone.

Ichigo bristled, pissed that Grimmjow had responded so quickly, like he didn’t even need to think about it. “You fought with us against the sternritters! You left Hueco Mundo and agreed to fight with us, so how am I still your enemy?”

“I agreed because I knew you would be there!” Grimmjow said, expression cracked open wide with rage and something else for a moment before it all shuttered closed again, the speed of it feeling a little like whiplash. Desperation, rage, solitude. He shifted underneath Ichigo, the fingers still steadfast around his ankle as hot as a branding iron. “If that Quincy fuck blew everything to hell, how were you supposed to make good on that fight?”

“Me, you came for _me_?” Ichigo asked as if he hadn’t already known that, as if that very fact hadn’t plagued his every waking hour for the last fourteen months.

It was just as Grimmjow had said to him as they’d all hurtled towards the Soul Palace in Yukio’s fullbring box. _If Hueco Mundo’s no more, where am I supposed to kill you?_ Could it really be that easy? That simple? Even now that Ichigo knew the laundry list of things Grimmjow had surrendered just step out of the Garganta in front of him that day. Had those all just been meaningless concessions? _Easy, simple_ things to forfeit just to get to Ichigo, when Ichigo thought that sort of suspension of pride and autonomy was monumental. There was no way, just no fucking way, that Grimmjow thought that highly of fighting him again. It was just some weird, blistering vendetta he must have because their fight was never finished, because one of them was still _alive._ He had, after all, spent a great deal of time screaming that into Ichigo’s face during their battle in Hueco Mundo. That had to be all it was, unfinished business. Because that level of commitment, that blind devotion…

“That’s what I just fuckin’ said, Kurosaki.” His eyes were as blue as gas fire, gaze just as heated. “Hueco Mundo is _mine_ , no Shinigami or Quincy is taking it from me. And I’m not rolling over until I’ve had my fair fight out of you. I felt that way before I learned your dirty little secret, and I still feel that way now. So fuck you if you think I’m gonna settle for anything less.”

**~**

Grimmjow’s heart was stampeding in his chest and all he was doing was laying on the ground, staring up at Kurosaki’s dumb, soft face. Somehow, he hadn’t meant to say all that, hadn’t meant to admit it, least of all to Kurosaki himself, but it was the _truth_. Grimmjow abhorred lying, found no purpose in the act because people that lied knew that the truth would hurt worse in the end, and Grimmjow was very much in the business of doing the most damage possible at all times. In Kurosaki was the only place he could see that maybe it wasn’t all a lie, the whole fourteen-month long dirt nap business. He hadn’t exactly had time to study his own reflection since leaving Hueco Mundo, but he didn’t need a mirror to see that Kurosaki had changed. Thinned out, chin sharper, jaw filled out, like he’d finally grown into his own bones. Still lean as all hell, Grimmjow had been able to see the outline of a couple of Kurosaki’s ribs when he’d tried to choke him out in front of his Shinigami buddies. But those lithe limbs hid whipcord strong muscles. His jaw still ached from where Kurosaki had decked him, the strength behind even a half-connected punch surprising him enough that he’d bit his own lip hard enough to break the skin.

 _Killed_ , that was what he’d said. Ulquiorra had _killed_ Kurosaki, and whatever he kept smothered down in the blackest depths of his soul had come crawling out to preserve its host. _White_ , the Vasto Lorde that Kurosaki just happened to be sharing some part of his soul with. As if it was no big deal, as if Grimmjow hadn’t spent years and years and endless fucking years trying to become the very thing that his sworn rival rejected. Eating everything that couldn’t eat him first, perpetually looking over his shoulder, scrounging and clawing his way through every day until some rat bastard Shinigami tracked him down and squeezed him into a different body. Kurosaki was _his prey,_ not Ulquiorra’s. It was inexcusable that even after banishing Ulquoirra that the fucker had come back to finish what he’d started. Grimmjow wondered for a moment if the hole in the Vasto Lorde’s chest that he saw in the memory had been Ulquiorra’s doing, the very same place that Ulquorra’s hollow hole had been, the very same one he’d dealt Kurosaki that Grimmjow had made that voluptuous ginger friend of his heal.

Kurosaki made a sound like he was being strangled as Grimmjow tracked the blood that ran down from his nose and wet the seam of his lips. “Your life can’t only be about fighting me,” Kurosaki said finally, voice coming out all hoarse and scratchy sounding, like he’d been yelling for hours.

Grimmjow was so mesmerized by the crimson that trickled from one corner of Kurosaki’s mouth, he hardly heard what the asshole had said. He could smell that blood, copper and salt, overwhelmingly pungent this close, dirtying his jacket, splattered across his chin. There was a familiar conviction in those eyes now, glowering down at him in focused concentration. That same look was burning in Kurosaki’s eyes, the same one as always, like Grimmjow was something _conquerable._ If he used the right words, held back enough to maim but not _destroy_ , that Grimmjow could be defeated, that he could be put in his place, probably somewhere underneath Kurosaki’s shoes.

“What do you care?” he ground out, shifting under Kurosaki’s weight, gripping the ankle he had ahold of until he saw Kurosaki wince. Bastard was heavier than he looked. “You don’t control me.”

Kurosaki’s face did something interesting then, a series of expressional acrobatics, jumping from anger, to resignation, to something bordering on faint amusement in a matter of seconds. When he sighed deeply, as though he were emptying out the entire capacity of his lungs, Grimmjow could physically _feel_ the way his body slumped a little. Like he was resigning himself to something.

“If you still wanna fight, I’ll fight you. I made you a promise and I intend to keep it. But there are still things we gotta make right first.” Kurosaki hesitated, mouth pressing into a flat line. “You help us, and I’ll fight you. All out.”

“All out?” Grimmjow echoed, the yawning blackhole inside of him trembling at the idea of all Kurosaki’s power directed at him and only him, all for him to consume, for no other reason than to just _fight_. It set something ablaze in his gut, warm and burgeoning, promising fulfillment, vindication, _satiation_.

Kurosaki’s tongue darted out, swiping across his bottom lip and collecting the red there. Grimmjow didn’t miss the way the Shinigami grimaced, pupils blooming wide and shoving aside the warm brown for a moment. “Yeah, all out. You’ll help me save Nel and Harribel? Hueco Mundo’s your home, right, so you’ll help me save it, won’t you?”

“Fuckin’ deal,” he said in a rush, not wanting to give Kurosaki the opportunity to take it all back. He could be patient; the best hunt was always a challenge anyway. “Gonna have to get off me then, Kurosaki. Don’t think you can save the world while you’re straddling me.” The red that flushed up Kurosaki’s neck and into his cheeks, all the way to the tips of his delicate looking ears, was an oddly satisfying sight. So was the subsequent scrambling the Shinigami went about to move away from him.

A sharp crackle echoed around them and they both threw their heads back to watch a deep fissure crack its way across the pink ceiling. Grimmjow propped himself up on his elbows, watching the crack spiderweb out. With a shattering snap, the kido barrier broke apart and rained down like shards of glass. Kurosaki threw his arms up to cover his face but Grimmjow stared in something not unlike wonderment as a fragment plinked against his forehead and burst into a shower of glitter that quickly dissipated. The entire shell of the barrier fell apart and somewhere behind Grimmjow, loud enough to send a mild jolt through his body, came the sound of both of Kurosaki’s swords falling to the ground in a clang of metal. Pantera stood behind Kurosaki a few feet, right where Grimmjow had left her.

“Have we got everything out of our systems now?” Kisuke asked, his shadow falling over both of them as Grimmjow craned his neck to scowl at the blond asshole.

“Who the hell knows,” Kurosaki griped, wiping his nose with the sleeve of his shihakusho, eyes hidden by orange hair as he did so. “You could put a mood ring on this psychopath and it would never change shade.”

Grimmjow didn’t know what a mood ring was, but he knew an insult when he heard one. He whipped around, lip drawing back in a snarl as he considered the cost of ceroing Kurosaki’s face off.

“What serendipity!” Kisuke crowed, undeterred as always, paper fan covering his ever-present grin. “Now that we know Grimmjow-san isn’t in danger of summoning the cavalry with his sudden appearance, I have quite a few questions I need to ask.”

“I’m done gettin’ interrogated today,” Grimmjow grumbled as he sat up fully, reaching up to massage his jaw for a moment before he climbed to his feet. He glanced down at himself to take in the blood – _Kurosaki’s blood—_ smeared all down his jacket, smudged across his collarbones, shining red against the metal of his jumpsuit’s zipper. He was a fuckin’ mess and it was all Kurosaki’s fault, per the usual. Ignoring Kisuke, he moved to extract Pantera from the dirt, sliding her back into her scabbard.

“I’m afraid that the cost of harboring a fugitive is going to be your full cooperation, Grimmjow-san.” There was no humor in Kisuke’s voice with that statement. “And considering you can’t leave our barriers without your reiatsu raising every red flag from here to Seireitei, I’d say it’s a small compromise.”

Grimmjow glanced sidelong at Kurosaki, meeting his gaze briefly and watching the way his shoulders ratcheted up a fraction. But the look in his eyes brokered no argument; comply or suffer the consequences. Grimmjow gnashed his teeth together so hard that something clicked uncomfortably in the hinge of his jaw, and did his best to squash the sudden bloom of rage in his chest. He was willing to go to great lengths to preserve Hueco Mundo, it was his home, _his,_ and it had been long before Aizen and his goons had taken over. He was begrudgingly willing to go to bat for Nelliel and Harribel as well. Nel had saved him, pulled him out of the sternritter trap, and Harribel had stopped at nothing to gain control of Las Noches after Aizen’s defeat, fending off certain mutiny. He would not play house with the Shinigami though, he’d rather die. He’d find a way to kill Kurosaki, their deal be damned, no matter how much bad blood it created between him, Yoruichi, and Kisuke. But the shit he was already having to sacrifice had better damn well be worth the end reward…

“Fine,” Grimmjow snapped, feeling the entire situation slipping through his hands faster than sand. “But nobody, and I mean _nobody,_ is playing mad scientist on me anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a side-note, physically I assume Grimmjow has a heart, because otherwise all that blood wouldn't come gushing out of him in every fight. I imagine hollows lacking hearts is more of a figurative/metaphysical/mental thing. *end ramble


	7. The Lie In Which You Linger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for being patient with this update. This chapter changed several times before I was okay with it.

**~  
  
**

_“I may never be enlightened  
enough to decide how I want to die.  
So, this morning  
I’ve decided how I want to live.”_

Andrea Gibson, **Enough**  
  


**~**

Grimmjow was standing begrudgingly in the middle of an exceedingly human room, with wood paneled walls and a tatami mat floor. He was staring at blood that had soaked into the mat, ruining it, and the macabre smudge of it running down the wall near the stairs. And in the corner of the room was Kurosaki’s human body, propped against the wall looking as though he was resting and not at all like the empty vessel it apparently was. Still shirtless with thick gauze wrapped carefully around the shoulder that Grimmjow had mangled. He knew Kurosaki was human, _he knew,_ but there was something disconcerting about watching the Shinigami gently grab himself under his own arms and haul the shell of himself up to its feet before shrugging back into it like it was a coat. The flexing of fingers for motor control that then ghosted over his injured shoulder as if to check that the damage was actually real was practically insult to injury in Grimmjow’s opinion. He scowled and looked away as Kurosaki trudged up the stairs and out of sight.

He settled on leaning against an unsullied wall, filing away the sight of Kisuke sorting through a stack of something piled high on the low table before him as Tessai set out several cups that steamed gently. When Kurosaki came back down with a shirt that he was pulling on as he wandered towards the exit that Grimmjow had observed earlier before letting himself in, he couldn’t help but speak up.

“The fuck you think you’re going, Kurosaki?”

“Home, Grimmjow,” Kurosaki snapped, shooting him a look that was a mix of exasperation and exhaustion. “I’m going to get a proper healing and maybe some sleep since I’ve been up for almost two days.”

“You can’t—” Grimmjow began to protest, rage igniting in his gut at the sight of Kurosaki turning his back towards him.

“You’ll be just fine here until I come back later. Try to behave yourself.” He couldn’t decide which was more insulting, the fact that Kurosaki got the last word or the sound of the sliding door rattling in its frame as it was literally slammed shut in his face.

He scowled at the closed door for longer than was probably necessary, feeling the blaze that was Kurosaki’s reiatsu growing harder to sense as the distance increased. _Fuckin’ ridiculous,_ he thought, that a human, a mere _human_ , could emanate that much spirit energy constantly. It was kind of impressive that it didn’t do any damage to his human form considering it seemed like too much for too small a container, but maybe that was why so much spilled out all the time. The temptation to hunt Kurosaki down, throw his stupid transformation badge as far away as he could, and hold Kurosaki down and see what would happen if all that spiritual energy came roiling to the surface of his human skin was a bit overwhelming for a few minutes. The faster this whole Hueco Mundo business could be resolved, the faster he could find himself doing just that.

So, Grimmjow thumped down on the floor across the table from Kisuke and his comical pile of nonsense and fixed him with a glare. “Ask your shitty questions.”

“Dear me, I’m already getting Déjà vu,” the Shinigami said with what was probably supposed to be a bashful smile.

Grimmjow just rolled his eyes as Kisuke abandoned the papers before him in favor of one of the steaming cups. “Yeah, great fuckin’ times. Spare me your version of Kurosaki’s shitty story, would ya.”

Kisuke regarded him over the rim of the cup, steam curling around his nose. “I fail to understand why you’re so committed to disbelieving Kurosaki-san. He told you the truth.”

Grimmjow rotated his head around slowly, letting the vertebrae in his neck pop in relief before fixing Kisuke with a bored look. “Prove it.”

“Fair enough,” Kisuke conceded, setting the cup back onto the tabletop. “This is the knowledge I have secondhand: Nel was able to rescue all of us from the sternritter’s dying trap. You were the only one conscious for this, yes?”

Curling his lip at the fresh reminder of heaving his guts out, Grimmjow drew his knees up and draped his arms across the tops of them. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Kisuke nodded as if he’d believed that story all along but appreciated the confirmation nonetheless. “Nel said you ran.”

“I didn’t run!” Grimmjow snapped, a rush of indignant rage blazing to life in his chest. “I was fucked. Putting my hand through that motherfucker’s chest… I don’t know, his blood did something.”

“You figured nobody else would be able to heal you.” The Shinigami’s words and expression were not unkind, not even remotely in the realm of passing judgement either, but Grimmjow couldn’t help but bristle under the scrutiny.

“What about it? You expect me to believe one of you assholes is an expert in Quincy poison?”

“Well, yes,” Kisuke admitted, scratching lightly at the blond stubble shading his cheek. “But, he was rather indisposed at the time I’ve been told, so I’ll call that point a draw. You went to Hueco Mundo then?”

“Yes. How is any of this important?”

“Why?” Kisuke demanded, leaning forward, thin fingers still wrapped delicately around his drink.

Grimmjow was never one to shy away, rarely hesitated to call someone’s bluff, but he felt himself shrink back inwardly at the interrogation. It was hard to admit that he’d fuckin’ bolted because he wanted a little dignity to his death. He’d known that the only Shinigami who might even give a remote shit about the fact that he was practically tongue kissing death were all incapacitated or absent, and he’d already known that there was nothing he nor Nel could have done. He hadn’t thought that Kurosaki would show up at the end, not that he really thought that the mouthy jerk could have been much help either. The fact of it all was that he hadn’t died, just rested, _dreamed._

That was still a revelation he was going to have to slink away to process at some point. Arrancar didn’t really need to sleep the way humans did, definitely not every night and definitely not for hours at a time. So Grimmjow had never really _dreamed_ before. But maybe reliving the memories of dead comrades and enemies didn’t exactly count as dreaming though, he wasn’t exactly an expert on the topic. All he’d done was lie in the sand and doze, for shit’s sake. Until his body could fight the poison off on it’s own somehow.

“There wasn’t shit anybody could do, so why not?” he murmured, breaking away from the focused intensity of Kisuke’s storm-grey gaze to stare at the pink dusting of broken blood vessels that spanned the knuckles of his right hand. From decking Kurosaki in the face.

“Did you have any way to track time passing while you were in Hueco Mundo?”

Grimmjow frowned, brows pulling down low as he continued to inspect his bruised knuckles. “No, all I did was sleep. Who keeps track of time while they’re sleeping?”

“You slept?” There was incredulity in Kisuke’s voice now and Grimmjow glowered up at him through his lashes.

“That’s what I just said.” The fervent interest in the Shinigami’s face eased Grimmjow into the next admission, though it did not go easily, clawing its way up his throat like something feral. “I just laid in the sand, kinda sunk into it, I don’t know. And it spoke to me, the sand I mean. Maybe spoke ain’t the right fuckin word…” It was frustrating how difficult the experience was to describe.

“The sand spoke to you?” The doubt that had edged into Kisuke’s voice finally got Grimmjow to lift his head and look fully at him.

“It— sort of just spoke to me, soothed all the pain, healed me maybe? I don’t fuckin’ know.” He didn’t know how many more times he could stress that fact before he snapped, Kurosaki’s threat to behave be damned. His mind flickered briefly to the vision of Kurosaki’s Vasto Lorde form, but he shut that down tight. Kurosaki had said that Kisuke might not know about that little juicy secret, and Grimmjow was abso-fucking-lutely willing to keep it to himself if it meant leverage, or blackmail, or a negotiating tool. He wasn’t above fighting dirty with that information, so he’d play it close to the chest for now.

“Is it conceivable that maybe you were really there for longer than it felt? That something sentient within Hueco Mundo sensed your distress and came to your aid?” Kisuke caught his eye and the two of them stared at each other for several heartbeats before Grimmjow looked down at his knuckles again. He swallowed hard, mouth feeling as dry as the desert he came from, and he reached up to run a hand through his hair.

“Maybe,” Grimmjow yielded quietly, the admission feeling like the most bitter kind of defeat, too much like surrender.

Kisuke hauled in a deep breath, fingers drumming absently against the sides of his cup as he nodded his head, gaze shifting and eyes focusing on some unknown middle distance. “I think I might have a theory.”

**~**

“I’m home!” Ichigo called into the house as he kicked his shoes off by the door. There was a chorus of voices that greeted him, one too many for the usual Kurosaki household for the hour. Frowning, Ichigo rounded the corner to find Yuzu stationed at the stove, the scent of something savory wafting from the various pots that cluttered the burners. Karin was belly down on the floor with a video game controller in her hands, eyes glued to the TV screen. And seated on the couch, red hair fishtailed down to her mid-back and warm eyes regarding him, was Inoue.

“Kurosaki-kun, it’s good to see you!”

“Inoue,” he said a little dumbly as he stared. He hadn’t seen in her in… well a while. Ichigo was an honest enough person to admit that he was a rather shitty friend, pretty out-of-sight-out-of-mind when it came to most people, especially when he threw his focus into one thing. It had been at least a month, maybe two, since he’d last seen Inoue. Since the end of the war and since she’d moved just a half hour outside of Karakura proper to attend a nearby culinary school, they didn’t get the chance to see each other frequently. In fact, it was like that with most of his friends: Ishida in medical school at the university downtown, Sado having moved away to the States to pursue a promising boxing career. Out of the four of them, it was Ichigo that was standing still, rooted.

She rose from the couch, thin hands smoothing her summer dress of wrinkles. “Yoruichi-sama called me and said you might be in need of, ahh how did she put it, a ‘competent healer’.”

Ichigo absently put a hand flat on his busted shoulder. “I didn’t know you were in town,” Ichigo began, guilt spearing him in the gut.

“I’m staying with Tatsuki-chan for the weekend!” Inoue beamed, eyes wrinkling closed for a moment. “There’s a really famous bread festival in the next town over that I convinced her to go to with me. It was a bit last minute.” She came around the couch, stepping over Karin’s legs, to stand in front of Ichigo.

Ichigo smiled down at her as she extended her arms for a brief hug that he returned. Inoue had always felt a bit like coming home, to someone familiar, warm, understanding, motherly in the same way Yuzu was. Ichigo rested his chin on her head, her hair smelling of something sweet, before they pulled apart.

“Why don’t we go upstairs?” she suggested, fingers reaching to tuck a stray piece of her hair behind one ear.

“Sure,” he consented, knowing how Yuzu felt about blood in her clean kitchen. Inoue clearly remembered as well.

“Will you be staying for lunch, Orihime-chan?” Yuzu called as they headed for the stairs.

“Oh, no, I’ll be leaving for the festival after this,” she replied as Ichigo ascended the stairs.

“You’ll have to stay next time you’re here,” he heard Yuzu insist and couldn’t help but smile at her tenacity.

“I will,” Inoue promised and Ichigo turned to allow her into his room before closing the door behind them both.

This procedure was as familiar as she was: sitting down on the edge of his bed as she sat in his desk chair, pulling his shirt up over his head and throwing it on the floor. An ingrained habit, one he hadn’t ever really appreciated until he didn’t have it anymore, until the war had ended and there was no need, until Inoue had moved away to let her life actually start in all the ways that Ichigo still couldn’t somehow. She unwound the bandage that Ichigo could only assume that Tessai had wrapped around his shoulder, depositing it in the waste basket under his desk. She leaned in to inspect what was left of the wound, an ugly gash just barely scabbed over, dried blood clotted around it.

“This looks like it was pretty bad.” she observed with a gentle voice, hand raising to the rikka at her temple. In a flash of orange light, the radiant warmth of Soten Kisshun enveloped his left shoulder. He watched her brown eyes widen a fraction as she placed her hands on the edge of the ambient glow, but it was a reaction she quickly smothered. “What happened?”

Ichigo blanched, going rigid all over. Shit _,_ he couldn’t tell her about Grimmjow, about how he managed to open a Garganta into the Living World, rip his way through all of the shoten shop’s wards, and stab Ichigo on what essentially amounted to principle. No one could know that Grimmjow was here, here and alive and a threat in every capacity. Not to mention whatever was going on with Hueco Mundo that Urahara was going to great lengths to keep hushed. She had a life now, a home and a career. She shouldn’t have to worry about war anymore, not when she had already fought in so many. Ichigo owed her that much.

“I finally convinced Urahara-san to fight me with his bankai,” he claimed, trying to keep a neutral expression, forcing himself to relax, to play it off like a twinge of pain. “I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be so powerful.”

“I see,” Inoue hummed, fingers splaying wide, the warmth trickling deep into his shoulder, likely healing what Yoruichi couldn’t. The pregnant silence hung between them and Ichigo had his mouth open to steer the conversation in an entirely different direction when she spoke up again. “You know, I’ve healed enough wounds made by this reiatsu, most of them on you, to know better. It doesn’t feel quite the same, but I’d recognize Grimmjow-san’s reiatsu anywhere.”

 _Shit._ Busted.

Her words kicked his heart into his throat, and he scrambled for the right thing to say. “I—”

“So, Grimmjow-san is alive then,” Inoue mused quietly, coasting one hand across the bubble of her power ensconcing Ichigo’s arm to hold it over his shoulder blade. She wouldn’t meet his gaze at first, focusing on healing him instead. “Though, I suppose, no one is supposed to know?”

When she did meet Ichigo’s gaze, her eyes were a little melancholy and Ichigo understood immediately. They had been through so much together, over the course of both their young lives. Inoue had gone with him to save Rukia, knowing the scale of what they were up against there. And Ichigo certainly hadn’t thought twice about sneaking into Hueco Mundo to save her when she’d been captured by the Espada. There were relatively few secrets between them, because a team usually worked best when everybody was on the same page. She must have thought that things couldn’t have changed _that_ much since the war ended fourteen months ago, and she was right.

“I only just found out today,” Ichigo admitted quietly, caving, lowering his gaze to his hands and where they rested on his knees.

She sucked in a deep breath, holding it in for a heartbeat before letting it out in a rush. A pulse of orange light wiped away all evidence that his muscles had ever been flayed. “Well, it’s good, no? Nel’s been looking for him all this time and you’ve missed him.”

“ _Missed him?_ ” he squawked, indignant, head shooting up to pin her with an incredulous look. “Yeah, because I’m at a loss when I’m not stuck in a grudge match with that psychopath.”

The look Inoue gave him, something akin to a mother finding her kid with their hand in the cookie jar, shut him right up. She just shook her head, a small smile tucked in one corner of her mouth. “Well?” she prompted, head tilting to the side expectantly as she stared at him. And he knew that look well enough to know what she was asking of him.

So, he did, he told her all of it. Hesitantly, haltingly, Ichigo refreshed her on the specifics he knew she was aware of: the world divider, keyed with her spirit signature too of course, Nel’s progress reports and the sound of her voice ringing tinny through the shoten shop every week for a year, and Grimmjow who had been courting death when he’d committed what everyone had thought was his final disappearing act. He told her about staggering down the stairs to the sound of the wailing device only to get skewered in the shoulder. How Grimmjow didn’t know, couldn’t – _wouldn’t_ — accept the truth; that if he hadn’t been dead, then he’d been missing all this time. The streak of something dark in his spirit ribbon, the spirit levels in Hueco Mundo becoming worse. Everything devolving into a brawl, they way things always seemed to when the two of them were within arm’s length of each other. Inoue sat in silence, listening intently as she always did, nodding as Ichigo stumbled through the events. The only thing he kept to himself was all that he’d felt from Grimmjow’s sword, selfishly swallowing down those razor-sharp realizations.

He told her of their awkwardly tentative deal; that he would fight Grimmjow all out if he agreed to lay low and help Urahara again. “I had to uh, barter for his cooperation,” he admitted, feeling a little stupid.

“Barter?” Inoue echoed, thin brows drawing together in confused concern.

“Yeah. I— well, if Soul Society knows he’s here, that he’s _alive,_ who knows what they’ll do.” Ichigo could, in fact, think of about eight things off the top of his head right then, six of which ended with Grimmjow’s execution or permanent imprisonment. “Two former Espada that you have an agreement with are easier to deal with than one loose cannon who just so happens to be the aspect of Destruction.”

Inoue frowned, seemingly distracted by her own thoughts. “‘All out’ is quite a commitment. Aren’t you worried you’re just playing into what he wants?”

Of course he was, Ichigo knew that much. He was under no delusions that Grimmjow’s motives weren’t driven solely by his hollow need to defeat or destroy Ichigo, whichever happened to come first. Though, for someone who liked to deal damage as bloody and excruciating as Grimmjow did, consumed now by some new notion that Ichigo had held out on him thereby insulting his pride and his prowess in one fell swoop, simply scoring the W likely wasn’t going go cut it for him. Ichigo didn’t want to chase that rabbit of a thought too far down it’s hole, knowing it ended in visions of him strewn across the white, Hueco Mundo sand as Grimmjow stomped in puddles of his blood like a toddler on a rainy day.

“I’ve got a bit more control now than the last time I fought him while hollowfied,” Ichigo reminded her with a wry smile.

Her answering one was tight, just like her eyes. “It seems a dangerous promise to make, Kurosaki-kun. Even if the circumstances are different.”

Ichigo fell thoughtfully silent for a moment, mulling her words over once more. Grimmjow really did tend to bring out the worst in him, drive him into his instincts with endless taunts and painfully accurate snap-observations. Clever, devious, relentless, a brutal tactician, all the traits that made someone worth fighting, in Ichigo’s opinion. But his opinion would likely be an outlier if somebody felt bold enough to conduct a survey. Maybe Inoue was onto something.

“I figure if I could manage it against Yhwach, then Grimmjow should be no sweat.” He shrugged, trying for casual.

“You’re probably right. You know your own limits best.” Inoue withdrew her hands and settled them into her lap, the glow surrounding Ichigo’s shoulder dispersed with a soft sigh. “How does that feel?”

He rolled and stretched the joint, waiting for even a twinge that never came. He ran a hand over the unbroken, unmarred skin, not a single trace that anything had even happened, that a blade had even toughed him. “Feels much better. Thanks, as always, Inoue.”

“Any time,” she murmured shyly, pink tinging her cheeks at his compliment. Some things never changed.

“Am I doing the right thing?” Ichigo wondered aloud, voice muted but thoughts unbearably loud. “Is getting involved in all this again when there are competent people, Shinigami and Hollows and Vizards, out there that could handle this better than I can?”

Inoue blinked once, eyes widening almost imperceptibly in surprise as she stared at Ichigo’s face, but he couldn’t meet her gaze. “Does it feel right?” she asked gently.

“I don’t know,” Ichigo replied, honestly, tracing a circle around the tear in his jeans just above the knee.

“Maybe that’s because this is the first time you get to make a choice this size for yourself.”

He looked up at that, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, with Rukia you felt obligated, right? She gave you power, sacrificed herself to help you be strong, you couldn’t let her die because she did nothing wrong. I’m your friend, and I was in danger, and some part of you probably felt obliged to rescue me. And Yhwach practically jumped you into the blood war.” Inoue paused, giving Ichigo a look that was unbearably soft and open, vulnerable, all wide-eyed and kind. “And maybe this is the first supernatural problem you’ve ever faced that wasn’t created and isn’t being driven by somebody else’s motives and machinations. There’s no Aizen plotting behind the scenes, no Yhwach waiting to strike when everyone is weak. If this is a danger, a true, honest threat to a world and a people that matter to you, isn’t that enough of the ‘right’ reason?” She was looking right at him again, like she used to, at him and through him. Through to the core of who he was as a person, how he viewed the world.

She was right, Ichigo thought firstly, and she had grown up so much, he thought secondly. But they all had. Those were the woes of forcing children to witness suffering and death, forcing children to be soldiers in a war they didn’t start. They had been given no other option than to grow up fast and learn to make decisions that, at the end of the day, really had to be _that_ simple. They had to be just a core value, an ideal that needed to be malleable enough to suit any situation because they were inexperienced and never knew what to expect. They’d never been given the luxury to decide what to believe in, what to stand for. But this time he really did have a choice, though it didn’t feel like it at the moment.

“You’re right,” he murmured, feeling like he was seeing clearly for the first time in too long. Like the haze of a headache finally passing, clarity returning. “I— it wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t at least _try_ to help. So, I will. I’ll do what I can.”

“And, you know we’re all here for you, right? I know you probably want to be all noble about it and say we all have lives and shouldn’t be bothered, but we’re always here to help you, Kurosaki-kun. Though, I won’t tell Ishida-kun until you think it’s necessary.”

Ichigo couldn’t stop the grin the split his face or the rush of warmth that flooded his chest. They would always have his back. Not even distance or his own piss-poor communication skills was going to change that. It was the kind of loyalty that made him want to cry if he was honest. Maybe because he felt the same way, and so strongly. He’d drop everything for any one of them in an instant to help and it was a special kind of bond, a special kind of love, to have those sentiments reciprocated. Inoue, comfortable in her own skin in ways Ichigo wished he could be, had always been too good at reading other people, though she usually kept those observations to herself. Not unlike, and yet very much unlike, Ichigo’s current preoccupation.

“If the going gets tough, you’ll be the first one I contact,” he promised, an easy one to keep. “Besides, Urahara-san has to figure out if there’s even a problem first.”

Inoue nodded once, contented with his answer. “Good. You’re accident prone as it is,” she said with a huff as she stood up, stooping to retrieve Ichigo’s shirt for him.

He tried to protest her statement as he accepted the shirt, but she merely laughed at him. “Bit of a strange coincidence though, don’t you think?” she asked with a tilt of her head.

“What do you mean?” Ichigo managed to say as he pulled his shirt over his head.

“He’s a bit like a harbinger, I guess. How come Nel never found him? How come he doesn’t know all of what’s happened? And why now? Why did he come back _now?_ ” She paused as she opened the door, gnawing at her bottom lip. “I s’pose those are all the things you’re trying to figure out, huh?”

He followed her down the stairs to wait at the door as she bid her goodbyes to Yuzu and Karin. She slipped her flats back on and gazed up at him, brows quirking as she took in his expression before reaching up and thumbing his chin as he spluttered after her. “Chin up, Kurosaki-kun,” she giggled as he rubbed where she’d touched, scowling. “It’s not all bad.”

“Hueco Mundo might be collapsing, I’ve unintentionally broken another one of Soul Society’s laws probably, and my not-by-me sworn enemy is a fugitive hiding out in the house of a weirdo shop keeper.” He paused to glower down at her. “Am I missing the rainbow in this thunderstorm?”

She assessed him briefly, eyes flitting across his grumpy expression of furrowed brows and a mouth pulled into a deep frown. When she smiled again, it was almost rapturous, like something had flipped a switch inside her until she glowed. There was a suspiciously knowing twinkle in her brown eyes that Ichigo decided he didn’t like one bit but couldn’t say why.

“He’s alive,” she stated simply, shrugging lightly. “And he came back for you.”

The complicated rush of emotions that washed through him at her words were far too jumbled and messy to psychoanalyze on the spot. So, Ichigo settled with sliding into an existential crisis right there on the threshold of the front door. If the look her gave her was a little nuts, well it _was_ kind of her fault. 

“He wants to kill me, Inoue,” he said, his tone plainly questioning her reasoning of how that fact could be construed in any universe as being a good thing. “Besides, all his other enemies have probably been obliterated. I’m just next on the list.”

The look Inoue gave him made him feel like she was looking down her nose at him despite the fact that he towered over her. “No, I rather think he just wants to beat you bloody and then do it all over again.” Inoue sighed in resignation, shaking her head as if she was going to be the one to suffer. “There’s no fun to be had if you’re dead.”

Ichigo had literally nothing even remotely intelligible to say to that, his mouth hanging open, so Inoue seized that golden opportunity to reach up and give his bicep a light squeeze before turning for the door. “I’ll call next time I’m in town. Maybe we can get lunch, Ishida-kun too!” She flounced out the door, her pretty sundress swirling around her knees. “Take care, Kurosaki-kun!”

Ichigo watched her retreating back, still gaping like a fish, until she disappeared around a corner. He stepped back as he lost sight of her, closing the door, and leaving a hand on the knob to steady himself.

“Who’s alive?” Yuzu’s voice came unexpectedly from behind him.

“Jesus, fuck!” Ichigo shouted, limbs flailing as he spun around, back to the door, heart in his throat. “What did I tell you about creeping up on people like that?”

“Swear jar!” Karin called from the other room and Ichigo threw the back of her head his best betrayed glower.

Yuzu regarded him blandly, wooden spoon in one hand, the other propped judgingly on her hip. “You’re not old or frail enough for me to give you a heart attack, Ichi-nii.”

“Well damn if you’re not trying anyway,” he grumbled, hand drifting up to his shoulder to rub at the healed skin there. It had been so long since he’d been properly healed by the likes of Inoue that he had become used to healing the human way: slowly. It was almost disconcerting that he had no pain because he kept waiting for the throb, the deep ache, that was never going to come now.

“Aren’t you going to eat lunch?” Yuzu questioned, voice full of worry as Ichigo turned back to the stairs.

“When I wake up,” Ichigo decided, ruffling a hand through her blond hair. “Set some aside for me, yeah?” He could feel her eyes on him all the way back up the stairs until he closed his bedroom door.

He felt disgusting, like he was covered in a thick layer of dust and blood and sweat but he was _exhausted_ and that was winning out over hygiene in that moment. He collapsed atop his bed, not wanting to peel the covers back and ruin them. Sleep and him hadn’t really been on good terms in the last fourteen months. Plagued by insomnia and nightmares in wonderfully cyclical bouts, the kind of sleep he got varied from none to maybe a couple hours of shit rest that he regretted when he woke up screaming. This month had been nightmares, and part of him now, face down into his comforter, knew that all of the last few days had been nothing but nightmare fuel. But he couldn’t stop the pull of his eyelids, sliding closed even though the room was still bright with daylight. Ichigo relished the brief respite of silence, lying suspended in a beam of warm sunlight, breathing lightly, his bed soft beneath him as he began to drift. It was a relief that couldn’t last.

For a brief moment, Ichigo was bewildered as the dream seemed to begin already in motion. He was running, sprinting down a narrow corridor of Yhwach’s reimagined Seireitei, arms pumping at his sides. There was a wall of smoke rising ahead of him, black against the blue of the sky. He didn’t know why he was running, if he was running from something or to something. Ichigo didn’t have to look down at himself to know he was injured, could feel the strain on his right side at his ribs where something was very much broken. He was blinking blood out of his left eye, likely from some gash on his forehead, and at least two of the fingers on his right hand were broken.

 _“The path is being closed, Ichigo,”_ called a voice from the ether and he grit his teeth against the sound. Sometimes Yhwach spoke to him, taunted him, reminded him that he was weak, powerless, hopeless, beneath him. But this voice was different somehow.

He came barreling out into an open clearing where he could see the black billow of Yhwach’s cloak just ahead and the flash of his blade, pure white light, as the Quincy king brought it arcing down against his opponent. The clang of metal meeting metal rang through the empty space, reverberating off what was left of the nearby buildings. Ichigo didn’t hesitate. He never did, not in these dreams. He launched himself to his inevitable end every time.

_“I still feel the looming shadow… the terror of death that he promised.”_

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Ichigo chanted, hysteria pulsing out of him in waves of crackling reiryoku that he could not control and could not contain.

He was always prepared to burn out in order to save others. The one versus the many debate had never worked on him, but silently, secretly, in his heart he had decided long ago that if ‘the one’ was just him, then it would be okay. It would be okay because it would be his choice, his decision alone, to give until he had nothing left. To fight until he could no longer stand, until he could no longer hold his sword. Until he was consumed by it. So, Ichigo reached for his swords, trying to suppress the urge to scream as his broken ribs dug into something important within him. Would it be the flash of Renji’s red hair first or the suffocating presence of Aizen’s reiatsu, maybe even a combination of the two?

Yhwach’s sword that swung out as the behemoth figure of the Quincy reeled around on him, intent to cleave him horizontally through the abdomen, missed by a hairsbreadth as Ichigo was yanked just out of range by the scruff of his neck. He yelped as he was dragged backwards and steadied on his feet. But it wasn’t Renji or Aizen for that matter. He shouldn’t have expected anything less; his nightmares consistently tested the bounds of his own understanding of cruelty.

It was Grimmjow that hauled him up by the collar of his torn shihakusho, but he looked unlike anything Ichigo had ever seen before. A waterfall of white hair whipped around him, the tendrils that straggled across his brow that Ichigo was so accustomed to seeing blue were black as night instead. The diadem of plated bone of his released state that rested across his forehead blazed with blue light. Blood was smeared across his maskless face, and in place of a hard, cobalt gaze there was nothing but light, eyes consumed by an ambient blue glow until they seemed flat and feral, beast-like. The hand that held his bicep to keep him steady was black to the elbow, fingers tipped with lethally long claws. The scar that bisected his chest was shedding aqua-colored reiryoku but even that familiar sight was nothing in comparison to the enraged snarl that this Grimmjow was levelling him.

“You could have done better, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow mocked, getting right into Ichigo’s face until they were nearly nose-to-nose, too close for Ichigo to continue gawking at his new form. “You let this fucker walk all over you, put bullshit in your head.”

Somehow, those words were more pitiless than the notion that maybe he had dreamed Grimmjow’s sudden reappearance because they spoke right to the soul of his awful dreams. That he’d almost given up fighting Yhwach, that he’d lost his will for a short while, that he hadn’t given it his all. And maybe, in the end, that was the one fact his mind couldn’t move past and that was why he was stuck reliving that last battle over and over again. As if he could find a way to get it right, but he never did.

“I tried! I’m trying!” Ichigo cried out, staggering back from Grimmjow’s strange form as if he’d been physically hit. But not too far as the clawed hand that gripped his bicep tore through his shihakusho and punctured his arm. The bright flare of pain that raced through the appendage, even the warm rush of blood that ran down it, was nothing compared to what Grimmjow said next.

“No, you didn’t. And you deserve to suffer this,” Grimmjow condemned in a snarl that bore a mouthful of teeth as sharp as knives, blue fire-like reiryoku blazing up around his bare shoulders.

And the black tidal wave of Almighty eyes that crashed over Ichigo was a welcome reprieve as it drowned him with a vigor, filling his lungs with darkness, and pulling him under. A reprieve even as he woke screaming, even as he rolled off his bed, even as his head hit the floor and a voice sent a discordant note of pain pulsing through his freshly healed shoulder.

_"My sweet heretic son lost in light, I can smell your soul rotting within your bones. Come home, come home, let us set each other free."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments as always are immensely appreciated, thanks for reading!


	8. Something for the Pain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *** A notice from your local healthcare provider: WASH YOUR HANDS, cover your coughs/sneezes/etc, please practice social distancing when you can, please be respectful of each other and workers in grocery stores/markets/retail, etc. If possible, please DO NOT go out shopping or for entertainment (avoid malls, theaters, stores, public spaces, etc if you can). If you feel ill, please contact your healthcare provider and inform them of your symptoms beforehand so they can best advise you on what to do. Be cool, stay safe, be alert and not anxious ***  
> Thank you for your patience with this chapter. As you can see above, it's been a wild fuckin' time out here for those of us in medicine. You guys are the best though and your amazing comments are what have kept me motivated to work on this story even after work has burned me out.  
> If you're in isolation and enjoying some awesome fics, make sure to give your authors some love by leaving kudos and comments. They're keeping us all going out there, and I know I deeply appreciate the authors I love who are creating in this distressing time. Mad love to everybody 🖤

**~  
  
**

_“If you are silent about your pain,  
they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”_

Zora Neale Hurston, **Their Eyes Were Watching God  
  
**

 **~**   
  


Breathing, he wasn’t breathing, not enough anyway. Black was funneling into him, rushing down his throat, pouring into his lungs until he was choking on all-seeing eyes. Trapped in darkness, Ichigo screamed, vertigo crashing through him as his body thrashed hard enough to roll off the bed and hit the wood floor of his bedroom. It wasn’t enough, the physical jolt never was anymore. He writhed there on the floor, body locked up at every joint, eyes open but seeing nothing but darkness, endless, insurmountable.

“Ichigo!” There were plush hands holding his cheeks with surprising strength, giving his head a gentle shake back and forth.

He hauled in a gasping breath like some drowning thing, focusing on the point of contact, blinking rapidly as he waited for his vision to clear of blackness and dark eyes. Before him was Kon’s beady, unblinking gaze, managing to telegraph concern through unmoving plastic as he held Ichigo’s face. With a surge, Ichigo sat bolt upright and folded over on himself putting his head, and Kon who still dangled from his cheeks, between his knees. Ichigo squeezed his eyes shut as he panted, heart louder than a war drum in his ears, Kon’s soft lion paws trying to find purchase on his legs. An anxiety attack was building in his chest, pressure behind his sternum, the tightness already there in the base of his throat.

“Talk to me, man,” came the mod soul’s voice as it ran a paw soothingly through Ichigo’s bedraggled hair. God, he was covered in a cold sweat, shirt drenched, skin sticky and uncomfortable, but all he could hear was the unknown voice ringing in his skull and the throb of his shoulder. He reached up, shoving the neck of his shirt aside to prod the area, but there was nothing. It was still healed; Inoue’s work hadn’t been undone. “Ichigo, are you okay?”

Slowly, Ichigo lifted his head, closing his knees so that Kon could balance on them. He was still trying to regain his breath, chest heaving as he opened his eyes finally, taking in the sunlight of his perfectly average bedroom. Bed rumpled, curtains still open wide, door still closed, average, not a battlefield by any means. But he could never be sure—

“Kon?” he said, less a question and more of a simple statement.

“Yeah, it’s me. That one looked rough.” When Ichigo’s gaze finally drifted down to the stuffed animal teetering atop his knees, Kon took a hesitant step forward and placed a hand on Ichigo’s pulsating shoulder as if he _knew._

“Something’s wrong,” Ichigo muttered, mind fractured into too many pieces to focus in on just one. Kon was just staring up at him helplessly. “Something’s different. I need— I need to go back to Urahara’s.”

“Ichigo, what’s going on? What’s wrong?” Kon pleaded as Ichigo grabbed him around his chest so he wouldn’t fall as he stood up. He deposited Kon on the bed before plucking at the hem of his shirt and peeling it off. “Don’t— don’t go before you talk to me, man. You don’t look good.”

He wasn’t listening though, staggering on his feet as he shucked his jeans and socks off before striding for the door. Kon continued to protest as he wrenched it open and beelined for the bathroom. It was hard to focus in on the next several minutes as Ichigo scrubbed himself down in the scalding water, eyes fixed unseeingly on the shower wall. But his gaze kept shifting, searching every shadow cast by the light affixed to the ceiling, every slanted line that the showerhead produced, every crevice where light didn’t touch. Ichigo inspected the skin of his shoulder as best he could from the front and the back, craning his neck until it kinked. He poked and prodded and pulled at the skin until it pinked under his fingers and the heat of the water. Nothing, there was nothing. Not a mark or a scar or even a freckle that suggested Grimmjow had even managed to skewer him to a wall. And yet, it ached, it was pulsing with pain like a deep bruise, and in that pulsating throb was the voice.

Dressed in clean clothes, hair still dripping down the back of his neck and soaking his shirt collar, Ichigo thumped down the stairs. He had no idea how long he’d slept for, but it couldn’t have been for more than an hour or so. His dad was seated at the kitchen table, phone in hand, the remnants of lunch spread out in front of him. Karin was exactly where she’d been since Ichigo had come home, now with an empty plate on the floor pushed off to the side, and Yuzu was scrubbing at a pot in the kitchen sink with a vengeance. All three of them looked up as he entered the room and it was painfully hard to ignore the unspoken tension of having so many sets of eyes fixed on him. They didn’t talk about the night terrors, at Ichigo’s request several months earlier. There was no point, he’d told them, for someone to come bolting into his room every night to shake him awake. It usually made it worse, knowing he was panicking whoever was on the other side of the dream he couldn’t shake himself from. Sometimes he didn’t know what was actually real and what was part of the nightmare and his first instinct was always to defend himself. He’d broken his dad’s nose _twice_ before the message had been received clearly. The night terrors were going to keep happening, eventually they were going to slow down, and eventually they were going to go away. At least, that was what he’d told them, and kept telling them over and over again.

“I’m going back to Urahara’s,” he informed them. The pot clanged in the kitchen sink as Yuzu dropped it, spinning on her heel to give him a look so blisteringly maternal it looked out of place in her teenaged face.

“You haven’t eaten,” she stated in that low tone that usually meant trouble if there wasn’t compliance. But Ichigo was still hardly listening, hand massaging his healed shoulder repetitively. That, of course, was what caught his father’s attention as he looked up from his phone.

“I thought Inoue had come over to heal that for you?” he jutted his chin at Ichigo’s display of anxiety-ridden ministrations and Ichigo dropped his arm like he’d been scorned.

“She did, it’s fine.” A mechanical reply if there ever was one. “I’ll text if I end up being late.”

“Ichigo, you are not leaving without eating!” Yuzu declared, brandishing the scrub brush as it shed suds all over the countertop.

“Just let him go,” he heard Karin say as he shoved his feet into his shoes. “He’ll talk about it when he wants to.” Ichigo pat down the pockets of his jeans to make sure he had both his phone and his substitute badge before walking out the door and putting his concerned family behind him.

It was ironic how _hollow_ Karin’s astute observation made him feel. She was right, sort of, and she knew it. But she also knew it was the most appropriate thing to say to placate his sister and father even though it wasn’t necessarily the truth. Ichigo had never told them about the nightmares and had no plans to start now. The only soul in all the three worlds that was vaguely aware of the content of his night terrors was Kon, and that was only because the mod soul lived in Ichigo’s room for the most part.

The golden blaze of the setting sun left the road aglow with warm light as Ichigo headed for the shoten shop. The air was cooler than it had been all week, not the usual stifling heat of the summer, but it was hard to appreciate the temperature and even the light breeze ruffling his damp hair when he was dug deep into his own head like a tick. It was just too much all at once, all over again. The night terrors and the exhausted, permanently pissed mood they left him in, coupled now with the reality that Grimmjow wasn’t actually dead, had maybe never been, was too much. That something not so good was happening in Hueco Mundo. That now the landscape and the narrative of his nightmares was changing. Ichigo knew that confiding in someone might help, might make him feel better, and he _wanted_ to sometimes. But there had to be a way to talk about what happened, what was still happening, without dwelling on how much it _hurt._ To heal what was hurt without reopening the wounds, the way improperly set bones sometimes had to be rebroken to heal correctly. Ichigo wanted to alleviate the pain, not tear open a wider space for it to fester inside himself.

But the words were hard to find, and the feelings were all so jumbled, knotted together until they seemed impossible to separate. How could he tell someone all that anyway? That he was grateful they’d won, that Yhwach had been defeated, but what that victory had cost him was indefinable. The weight of their dependence on Ichigo had crippled him. He wondered, and not for the first time, just how Renji was coping with all of this. He’d been there too, at the end of all things, had been the one to peel Ichigo off the ground when he’d given up. Ichigo couldn’t be the only one struggling to recover. He wished he could talk to Renji, talk to Rukia, anybody for shit’s sake. But he hadn’t heard a peep from anyone since he left Soul Society after the fiasco that was supposed to be a memorial service. This time around, the abandonment hurt worse than after he’d defeated Aizen and gave up his Shinigami powers. That time had at least been because of a decision he had made.

Ichigo didn’t realize how bad he was still shaking until he reached out to open the door of the shoten shop. He could only sense Urahara inside, so maybe everybody else was down below in the bunker. He yanked the door open, toeing off his shoes as he entered, padding into the shop to the room that he was a hard time believing he’d been drunk with Yoruichi in just twelve hours ago. Twelve hours ago he’d actually made peace with himself and the universe with its grand sense of humor, was laughing in his face now.

A cup of tea that had long gone cold remained untouched on the table where Urahara was still seated, a sea of charted readings spread out in front of him. The front panel of the world divider had been popped off, wires sticking out this way and that, all still connected, the thing still beeping softly. Urahara looked up at him as he entered, eyes homing in on Ichigo’s undereye circles that had grown even darker since his departure.

“Did you at least get your arm looked at?” he asked, exhaustion plain in his voice as he set his pen down. Clearly none of them had had any decent sleep.

“Yes, and shut up, I have to tell you something,” Ichigo said in a rush, flopping down to the floor across from Urahara. “This is gonna sound bonkers, but hear me out, okay? Something tried to contact me through my dreams today.”

Urahara’s frowned deeply and he regarded Ichigo stoically, grey eyes searching his tired face for even the semblance of a bad joke. When he didn’t find one, he prodded gently, “Contacted you how?”

“I— it spoke to me in a nightmare, I don’t know.” Ichigo was quietly and desperately trying to reel himself in. It was no secret that he suffered from insomnia, anyone who glanced at him would be able to tell, but he didn’t want to divulge too much, reveal his whole hand. He didn’t want to tell Urahara the entirety of his nightmare, any of them for that matter. “I don’t know how to describe it other than as a voice I’ve never heard before.”

Urahara nodded, clearly doing his best to hear Ichigo out as had been requested. He leaned back on his hands and his expression grew thoughtful. “Could it be your zanpakuto spirit, or possibly even your Hollow?”

“No, no,” Ichigo said, growing frustrated. “I don’t— I can’t really talk to them anymore, not the since they became two. I have to meditate pretty deeply now, and only sometimes. Besides that, it was a woman’s voice.”

“A woman’s voice?” It was painfully hard to ignore the note of alarm in Urahara’s voice just then, even harder to ignore the laser-focus that was now being directed at him. It was easy to forget that Urahara Kisuke was, at the core of his soul, a scientist and that he viewed everything through a clinical and logical lens. It was not easy to forget when that dissecting gaze got turned on him and picked him apart without needing to speak.

“Yeah, I mean, it sounded sort of feminine.” Ichigo blew out an exasperated breath. “Sometimes in my nightmares, I can hear Yhwach taunting me. About his power, his plan to render the past and future meaningless of whatever weird shit he had planned to do. But it’s always _his_ voice. It— it wasn’t this time.”

The long moment that followed was nothing but searching eyes that Ichigo told himself to endure before they would hold his gaze. Urahara nodded once, succinctly. “I believe you, Ichigo.”

The relief that flooded through him at those four simple words should have been embarrassing. But the instant support was enough to still the worst of the tremors still shaking his body. He left his hands in his lap though, hidden beneath the table as Urahara continued to stare at him, assessing.

“Can you remember what this woman said?” Urahara asked, haltingly.

“Yes.” Because it was still hauntingly clear in his mind, echoing on repeat like a scratched record stuck in a loop. “She said: _My sweet heretic son lost in light, I can smell your soul rotting within your bones. Come home, come home, let us set each other free.”_

To say Urahara looked simultaneously floored and astounded would have been the biggest understatement in Ichigo’s relatively young life. He looked like Ichigo had just backhanded him across the face after telling him he’d destroyed every shred of his life’s work. It was the look of someone now being forced to confront absolute lunacy and the look was doing literally nothing for Ichigo’s rather delicate psyche. In fact, he could feel something inside him, a presence deep within the well of his soul, begin to giggle like this was all just a hilarious joke they’d just understood.

Ichigo wanted to laugh too, but he knew it would come out sounding hysterical and unhinged and probably not unlike his own inner Hollow’s deranged laugh. He had to dig his blunt fingernails into the palms of his hands until the pain dulled the instinct before he spoke next. “First Yhwach and now this. If random people could stop referring to me as their ‘son’, that would be awesome. I have one dad, I like him very much, I’m not in the market for a new one.”

The wry smile that pulled at Urahara’s mouth settled Ichigo’s jangled nerves infinitesimally. “Maybe if the candidates had more to offer,” Urahara said and Ichigo cracked the tiniest grin this time. “Thank you for trusting me with this information, Kurosaki-san. I know it can’t be easy to talk about.”

Ichigo winced, shoulders hunching slightly at the comment. That was treading into the territory of sympathy that he did not to receive. “It’s fine. The more important thing is that this voice comes from here.” Ichigo placed a hand flat against his healed shoulder. “Inoue healed it for me, I guess Yoruichi-san knew she was in town. But it still _hurts_ and that never happens, not when Inoue has taken care of it.”

“Is that the shoulder—”

“Where the asshole stabbed me? Yeah, it is.” Ichigo pressed his palm into the unmarred skin, the pressure easing the dull throb for a moment. “I don’t wanna say that’s where the voice is coming from, but I don’t know how else to describe it.”

Urahara rubbed at the scruff on his chin for a silent, thoughtful few seconds before giving Ichigo a look that was probably meant to be encouraging but missing the mark. “Well, this is either the most interdimensional case of Folie à deux or we’ve discovered a connection here.”

Ichigo just stared blankly at him. “Please, be less cryptic. I’ve had a long ass day and I don’t wanna have to think so hard about this shit.”

With a Cheshire grin, Urahara cleared his papers from the table, stacking them neatly off to the side, and pushing his cold tea away as well. He regarded Ichigo with the unwavering clinicality of a scientist, the same focused and deeply uncomfortable look of scrutiny, before speaking. “While everybody is down below, I’m going to share with you information that does not leave this table.”

Ichigo sat up a little straighter at that, a wash of adrenalin surging through him. “Yeah, of course,” he agreed carefully.

“After you left, I spoke with Grimmjow regarding his absence,” Urahara began and Ichigo leaned forward, eyes widening. “Much like you’ve probably concluded, he has no memory of the last fourteen months. In fact, he had no concept of time passing at all and honestly believes that we defeated Yhwach yesterday.”

Urahara wasn’t wrong, Ichigo had already put two and two together during his Fight Club induction with Grimmjow earlier, but hearing it confirmed in a straightforward way sent his mind reeling. Fourteen months, _fourteen months_ , of pain both physical and mental, of nightmares, of driving himself out of his own mind with boredom, of feeling useless and abandoned and _guilty_ , and it had all been just a _day_ for Grimmjow. One measly, single fucking day.

“Now, I’m waiting on Nel’s full report of what she found, but with what she’s told us already and what I was able to deduce from Tessai’s examination, some unknown power must have healed Grimmjow in Hueco Mundo.”

Ichigo swallowed thickly, eyes darting to the bunker hatch in the corner of the room and back. “Healed him how? I mean, I know he fought that sternritter with the weird pants.”

Urahara’s ash-blond eyebrows pulled together in a puzzled from. “Is that all you know about that fight?”

Shrugging lightly, Ichigo reached up to rub at his shoulder again. “We all sort of got split up after landing in the Soul Palace. Nobody ever told me about what happened, and I guess I never took the chance to ask until now.”

Urahara sighed, eyes studying the way Ichigo kept kneading his shoulder. “Grimmjow was inflicted with a lethal dose of poison—”

“Wait,” Ichigo interrupted sharply. “I thought you and Yoruichi were both poisoned in that battle. Why’s it different for Grimmjow?”

“Because Grimmjow ripped the sternritter’s heart out and killed him,” Urahara stated simply and that memory hooked Ichigo around the throat and dragged him back into the moment. Blood, Grimmjow had been covered in blood. Even from a distance it was the first thing Ichigo had noticed after he’d spotted the blue hair. Blood all down his face and neck like someone had thrown a bucket of it on him. Blood, and the brutal grin that had distracted Ichigo from the black depths opening behind the arrancar until it was too late.

“According to Grimmjow, direct contact with the sternritter’s blood did more damage than the poison that was within the trap.” Urahara looked a little forlorn as he glanced away from Ichigo. “He didn’t think anyone would be able to heal him, so—”

“He ran,” Ichigo said, a complicated rush of rage and understanding sweeping through his chest.

Urahara winced a little. “He wasn’t very fond of that descriptor,” he murmured as he watched Ichigo seethe silently. “It’s beside the point now. The integral information here is that Grimmjow left gravely injured and returned healed. So, the next obvious question is how did that happen?”

“I’m all ears,” Ichigo grated out, hands curling into fists under the table.

There was so much that he didn’t know, so much that he’d never bothered to ask about, too lost in his own head for so long. He’d thought that all the things Tessai-san had told him earlier had been a lot to digest, but this was something else entirely. He’d known they’d all been injured, had seen Urahara, Yoruichi, and her brother in critical condition. He’d seen Grimmjow before he’d fled like an asshole. Ichigo had sort of assumed all this time that Grimmjow must have actually lost the sternritter after breaking off from their group to chase after him and just stumbled across somebody else to tear limb from limb. That maybe Urahara and Yoruichi had eventually crossed paths with the Quincy instead and fought him. But all this time it had been Grimmjow. It had been Grimmjow who must have saved Urahara and Yoruichi because he’d been the last one conscious and standing when it was all over.

It was Grimmjow again and again and _again._ In Hueco Mundo before the invasion, for the captains and lieutenants of the Soul Society, in the Soul Palace during the height of the war. It was Grimmjow giving up more than he could have ever possibly thought he’d gain just to get the payout of the promise Ichigo had made him. Grimmjow’s perspective on their fated rematch was becoming all too clear, most of the picture forming without much input from the arrancar himself.

_“So fuck you if you think I’m gonna settle for anything less.”_

“All three of the worlds, including the Soul Palace, are old, _very_ old,” Urahara began, leaning forward to put his elbows on the table and prop his chin up. “Your father obviously didn’t raise you to be aware of Shinigami history, but this is a common story most children are told: millions of years ago in a primordial world overrun with Hollows, the being that would later become the Soul King took it upon themselves to protect the original souls of that world by annihilating all the Hollows that terrorized them.” Ichigo stared, wide-eyed and not without a little childlike wonder as Urahara gazed, unfocused, at the cluttered tabletop. “The destruction of so many spiritual beings caused the world to become unstable. Five immensely powerful spirits eventually banded together to stop the Soul King and sealed him away. They split their world into the three we know today to rebalance it and therein created the life and death cycle for all souls. However, they still feared the power of the Soul King and ultimately made the decision to dismember and disembowel him. He remains confined to this day in the trap created by the five.”

Anxiety was prickling in Ichigo’s chest again, its sharp claws plucking at his ribs, testing his resolve and control. He tried to swallow the well of sudden panic rising in his throat, but his mouth was drier than a desert. “That’s what Yhwach wanted,” he croaked, voice coming out all scratchy. “He wanted to make the three worlds into one again, to bring back the original, deathless world of the Soul King.”

Urahara regarded him quietly, chin still resting top his stacked hands, gaze full of exhaustion and a strange knowing. “I figured as much. He was rather committed to absorbing the Soul King’s powers.”

“He failed,” Ichigo stated, trying to breathe discreetly through his impending anxiety attack, shoulder throbbing like a heartbeat.

“He did,” Urahara nodded somberly. “I asked Grimmjow, though I didn’t explain all of this to him, if it was possible that something sentient within Hueco Mundo sensed his state of injury and distress and came to help him. He said maybe.”

Ichigo tried to imagine Grimmjow alone and far from anything or anyone that could help him, heal him. He tried to imagine the pain in those moments, enough to believe he was dying, all alone in that frigid wasteland of a desert, and to have a voice call out to him. Or a presence surround him, a sign of any kind that he wasn’t truly alone. _Who? What?_ There had been so little left in Hueco Mundo besides droves of mindless, low-level Hollows after the sternritter invasion. Grimmjow and his reiryoku would have been a feast for any passing Hollow. And yet something had come to spare him, heal him, _protect_ him. Something that wasn’t Nel or Harribel, or even another Shinigami.

“I don’t understand,” Ichigo admitted quietly, staring dumbfoundedly at Urahara.

“I don’t either,” his mentor replied, though it sounded like it pained him to fess up to that. “I’ve spent all day wondering who or what would willingly make that sacrifice, would give aid in that manner. What would be self-actualized enough to maybe possess a sense of self and of duty, perhaps even a female-sounding voice.”

“And?” Ichigo asked, voice barely above a whisper. “The unknown power, that black streak in Grimmjow’s spirit ribbon, are they all related?”

“Hueco Mundo is old,” Urahara repeated, gaze drifting in and out of an unblinking, pensive stare. “ _Millions_ of years old, if the stories are true. I thought to myself, what if the Soul King hadn’t completed his task? What if he wasn’t able to annihilate all the Hollows in that primeval world before he was sealed away? What if something survived and remains?”

“An original Hollow? From before the splitting of the worlds?” Ichigo asked, heart drumming out a frenzied beat in his chest.

“Something that’s millions of years old, ancient and powerful and clinging to a world that someone had almost destroyed once before, keeping it alive. Something uninterested even in interfering with Aizen’s schemes because they didn’t even register as a threat.”

A chill went through Ichigo, racing along his spine as it stole into his limbs, and robbed every last reassurance that he understood what was happening right out of his chest. What had Inoue called Grimmjow again, a harbinger? Harbinger of what though? Destruction surely, because as batshit as Aizen might have been – and still was – he’d also been scary-good at sniffing out latent potential like some kind of bloodhound. He’d probably taken one look at Grimmjow and just _known._ But maybe he wasn’t a harbinger of _what_ , but of _who._

“Something that was trying to hold together a world on the brink of collapse but was unable to leave, unable to go and seek help by itself. What do you do?”

Ichigo shuddered, skin erupting in goosebumps as he shared a look of horror with Urahara. “You send a messenger.”

**~**

“You ever tried to wrap kido around a body like armor?” Grimmjow asked as he watched Tessai attempt to interlay one kido barrier into another, a dark blue into a brilliant green. He was seated on a boulder, one leg tucked up against his chest and his arm draped over it as he watched the stoic Shinigami basically choke them both out with a dust storm of failed kido. This was apparently his thing, at least that was what Kisuke had told him. He’d been a _Captain_ in kido, just like Kisuke had been a Captain. That meant strength, skill, and knowledge, even if he looked like a gentle giant.

“I beg your pardon?” Tessai turned to look at him, mustache bristling. He mopped his brow with his apron, his neatly cornrowed hair covered in a fine layer of dust. Grimmjow flexed his fingers in thought.

“Like Hierro. I know Shinigami don’t have it, but could you create the equivalent of it?” 

Tessai paused, reaching to readjust the thick frames obscuring his eyes. “I’ve never considered doing so before.”

That wasn’t exactly a no, so Grimmjow pressed a little more. “So, hypothetically, if you _could_ armor a body with kido, could you do the same thing with a ward?”

“It’s… not an unfeasible idea.” Tessai sounded genuinely impressed. “Though, both barriers and wards decay over time, and would probably do so faster if they were being used to mask reiatsu. Keeping them up for extended periods would likely require the caster to be present in order to boost them.”

Grimmjow thought about that. This whole kido and warding shit was not exactly in his wheelhouse. He wasn’t a Shinigami. He didn’t need assistance or some fancy wooden poles to open a Garganta. And while he could stifle his own reiatsu, squashing it down to seem lesser, he couldn’t hide it entirely. “Sure, but could you anchor the kido to the person you’re casting it on? Then it could feed on the reiryoku of the person it was being used on to maintain it instead.”

A grin that bordered on terrifying broke out across the Shinigami’s face and Grimmjow raised his eyebrows a little as he waited for an answer. “It’s certainly something I’m willing to try,” Tessai said, fingers twitching as if he was already working through the theoretics of Grimmjow’s suggestion in his head. “For someone incapable of performing kido, you have both an innovative and masterful understanding of the art, Mr. Jaegerjaquez,” Tessai complimented and Grimmjow preened a little internally.

“Isn’t it just reiryoku manipulation? Technically—” Grimmjow’s next words died in his throat, strangled by the sudden contraction of his entire body. For one horrendous fuckin’ moment, he thought he was going to start heaving his guts up again. No fountain of blood came gushing out of him though. Instead, a torrent of pain rushed through his hollow hole, scorching like fire and blooming out around the void. He smacked a hand down over the hole, the thin layer of fabric between his palm and the empty space doing nothing to contain the surge of sudden heat. Grimmjow was too focused on the burst of pain to realize his reiatsu had flared like a secondary reaction. But Tessai had obviously noticed, abandoning whatever he’d been doing to hover over Grimmjow’s doubled over form.

“Mr. Jaegerjaquez—” Tessai said somewhere above Grimmjow, voice quieted by the rush of blood in Grimmjow’s ears.

“What in the shitting hell—” he groaned, nearly folding over on himself, pinning his hand between his abdomen and his knees as if applying pressure was going to make whatever was happening stop. The pain was growing stronger than the temperature spike now and Grimmjow couldn’t tell if it was the muscles of his stomach or his actual Hollow hole that was quivering now.

“What’s wrong with you two?” Kurosaki’s voice broke across the wide space, each syllable like a sword through Grimmjow’s guts.

He was in his black, Shinigami shihakusho again, hair garishly orange in the sunlight, the sleepless black smeared under his wide eyes even more evident. Kisuke was behind him, eyes hidden in the shadow of his hat as they both approached.

“What the hell is going on?” Kurosaki demanded, planting an all too chummy hand on Grimmjow’s shoulder. The agony that bled into Grimmjow’s body at that simple contact had him twisting around sharply, grabbing Kurosaki’s wrist tight enough to snap it as he shot to his feet, and pushing the asshole away with a considerable amount of force. Kurosaki skidded back, sandaled feet scraping against the dried earth, throwing Grimmjow a look that was a cross between outrage and bewilderment. Keeping his one hand pressed to his spasming abdomen, Grimmjow’s other hand drifted to the hilt of his sword on instinct.

“Motherfucker,” Grimmjow swore vehemently, reaching up to yank the zipper of his jumpsuit down and bare his scarred abdomen to the three Shinigami watching him like he was transmogrifying into something. He pulled it down to just below the hole and all four of them stared at the neon blue vapor that was steaming out from the void. Grimmjow swiped a hand through the eerie mist but it felt neither warm nor cold, and the pain remained the same. He growled in the back of his throat as the three of them approached and Kurosaki also ran a hand through the blue, fingers nearly grazing his skin.

“Stick your hand in there!” Kisuke suggested unhelpfully. And Grimmjow’s head snapped up in time, nostrils flaring and lip pulling back in a territorially snarl, to see Kurosaki look back at the fucker with the same expression that said he also thought Kisuke was sick in the head.

“Hell no!” Kurosaki exclaimed, eyeing the thing like it was a blackhole that was actively swallowing matter, which maybe it was. It didn’t seem like any of them knew what the fuck was going on, Grimmjow least of all and it was starting to freak him out.

The stupid bastard should have known better and lowered his arm because it didn’t take much for Kisuke to reach over and shove Kurosaki’s elbow forward, thereby driving his hand up to the wrist into the void of Grimmjow’s stomach. There was the brief and immediate alarm of being viscerally violated in which Grimmjow’s entire body tensed like a wire pulled too taut and then—

“Oh, that’s weird. God, it feels like warm Jell-O,” Kurosaki howled, wrenching his arm out with so much speed that he knocked himself off balance and crashed to the ground where he landed on his ass. “Fuck you, Urahara.”

The pain was gone, gone like it had all been a fever dream, like it hadn’t just felt like hundreds of meat hooks attached to him and pulling in all different directions. So apparently getting fisted in his Hollow hole by his sworn enemy to relieve unexpected and blistering agony was another item Grimmjow needed to add to his list of things he needed to reflect on. The list was getting pretty fuckin’ long now and none of the items on it were any good. There was nothing to do but stand there and feel defiled.

“Most interesting,” Kisuke commented, squinting at Grimmjow’s Hollow hole as if the answers to the universe were in there. The blue vapor had dissipated like smoke, vanishing along with the pain and now Grimmjow was just the asshole that was half undressed, surrounded by a bunch of nosy Shinigami. “I imagine it doesn’t do that regularly?”

“A-are you okay?” Kurosaki asked from the ground, eyes studying his face while the other two were still watching the emptiness within him and staring right through it like they were expecting another smokeshow at any moment.

Grimmjow held his brown gaze for a moment before he narrowed his eyes at Kurosaki. “The fuck did you do? Nothing was wrong until you came down here.”

The asshole’s jaw nearly unhinged as it dropped open to gape at him. “How is this my fault? I can’t be responsible for you deciding to spontaneously combust.”

“Gentleman, once again I have to ask if the cat fight can wait? There are a number of far more important things that require our attention.” Grimmjow said nothing as Kisuke appraised them both with raised eyebrows, only reached down to yank his zipper back up to its usual height.

“Why are you and Tessai-san down here anyway?” Kurosaki inquired, glowering up at Grimmjow like he was mad that Grimmjow didn’t even have the common decency to offer him a hand up. With a huff, he climbed to his feet, brushing his hands down the black of his Shinigami uniform to divest it of dirt. It was then and only then, even after reaching for his own sword in a vivid display of a warning just moments ago, did Grimmjow notice that Kurosaki was without his swords _again_. The hell was that about?

“Tessai has been trying to craft a kido barrier that will work like a vacuum, or a void. Anything that is unleashed or used within it will be contained,” Kisuke informed him, tapping his caned sword against the ground in the clearest sign of impatience Grimmjow had seen out of the man yet.

“What are you planning?” Kurosaki asked, tone bordering on something vaguely suspicious which Grimmjow’s ears picked up on immediately. He glanced at Kurosaki out of the corner of his eyes, studying him up and down and cataloguing the reaction. Grimmjow was wary by nature, unwilling to trust just any bastard that wandered along. But Kisuke had proved himself trustworthy over their dealings, always spoke to and treated him like an equal.

If Kisuke was aware of the way Kurosaki was looking at him, he didn’t show it outwardly. “To open a Garganta to Hueco Mundo was my first thought, but I can’t control anyone’s reiatsu outside of the barrier. It feels pertinent to get there to help Nel and Harribel out, but I’m still trying to figure out how to do that without alerting the Soul Society.”

“With Mr. Jaegerjaquez’s insight, I may have found a way,” Tessai stated, gesturing loosely in Grimmjow’s direction. Kisuke’s expression didn’t change in the slightest at that new information and Grimmjow stared him down until orange wobbled on his peripherals as Kurosaki stepped foward. “Though it will need to be tested.”

“Serendipity!” Kisuke said, a grin that Grimmjow was willing to call malicious twisting his mouth up as he appraised both of them in a way that only an unhinged scientist could. “And here I thought this entire day had gone to shit.”


	9. Without Sinking

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone is doing well! Please, please, make sure you're abiding by any health organization/government directives in your area and self-isolating if possible. Stay. At. Home! It's integral that we all play our part in making sure that less people get sick.
> 
> On a happier note, y'all make my day. Thank you for all of the truly amazing comments you leave me. I love you guys ❤️

**  
~  
  
**

_“i know you.  
i know you the way ash  
remembers burning.  
you came around and suddenly  
every dead, charred thing inside of me  
sprang to life and whispered,  
‘again…’”_  
 **Pavana Reddy** **पवन  
  
**

**~**   
  


“Get up,” Grimmjow commanded, though it couldn’t have sounded very menacing considering he had to catch his breath in between the two words. And the fact he was nearly doubled over as though that were going to help him catch a second wind of energy definitely wasn’t helping the aura of intimidation he was trying to impart. Who knew fighting all out _while_ not causing any overt bodily damage or injury would be so draining?

At least those were the rules that Tessai and Kisuke had tried to implement to ‘create an environment and circumstances suitable for testing’ because of fuckin’ course Grimmjow would be made one of Kisuke’s test subjects again. At least he wasn’t the only one this time.

It had taken Tessai almost two hours to create a barrier that would even stick on Kurosaki. Grimmjow had sat around and watched, so bored it bordered on ennui, as Tessai poured sweat and Kurosaki did his best to stand statue-still as barrier after barrier snapped, ricocheted, shattered apart, or dissolved around him. Tessai and Kisuke had circled Kurosaki like a couple of vultures, eyeing him up and down, muttering to each other about what was wrong, what to tweak next, variables they could eliminate, endless chattering. It had begun to get unbearable, as Grimmjow was, and had been for _almost two hours,_ comfortably swaddled in a barrier that glistened a pale white, almost as though he’d been coated in some kind of iridescent liquid. He’d spent the first twenty minutes of the ensuing drama staring at the glitter on the backs of his hands, turning them to and fro in the sunlight, flexing them and feeling the easy pull of the barrier against his skin, letting Tessai talk him through how to keep the barrier anchored to his own reiryoku. Their reasoning for the delay was that there were more factors regarding Kurosaki’s ‘amalgamation of spiritual entities’ to consider in crafting the barrier than they had initially anticipated. Grimmjow didn’t even pretend to know what that meant, just watched Kurosaki shift his weight from one foot to another as he had been doing every five minutes, frustration beginning to seep out of him through body language alone.

But when a barrier finally stuck to Kurosaki, clinging to every fold in his shihakusho, every errant strand of stupidly orange hair, it was golden. Golden like the dawning of the sun, shimmering like every last particle of him was alive with light. Grimmjow couldn’t help but stare, caught off guard and enraptured by the sight of Kurosaki shining with all the light of his own solar system, turning his hands over in disbelief to stare at his gilded palms. And in that look was where Grimmjow knew he’d lost time somewhere, the way everyone had been telling him. Because somewhere between plummeting to what was supposed to be his untimely death and ripping his way into Kisuke’s shop, Kurosaki Ichigo had lost his spark.

But Grimmjow didn’t know how to process that vision at all, so when they finally got around to doing the only thing Grimmjow knew how to do best, he tried to shatter it instead. Forcing Kurosaki to turn on the taps of his reiatsu to full blast until it became hard to even look at him, the brightness trapped beneath the thin layer of gold shining out like a beacon. Again and again, as his reiatsu tore through the barrier, as Tessai cast another one over both of them as Grimmjow’s own barrier shattered in a cascade of silvered glass. Again as Kurosaki’s face grew brighter and more vibrant even without the filter of gold covering him, like he’d finally shaken off the layer of dust on his soul. He hurt to look at, but Grimmjow kept looking anyway.

“C’mon, asshole,” Grimmjow ribbed, attempting to stand up a little straighter in hopes of making his heavy breathing less noticeable. “I expected you to be better since you had to bring another sword into this.”

Kurosaki was ass down in the dirt, hands at either side of him, sword grips trapped under his flattened palms, and legs sprawled out. “Oh, screw you,” he swore, shaking his downturned head despite the grin on his face. His shoulders were heaving. “I didn’t choose to have two swords.” His tone had soured just a little, enough for Grimmjow to notice. Kisuke and Tessai were standing a reasonable distance away, to avoid the worst of their fighting, and just out of earshot. A moment to antagonize well worth seizing.

“Right, and this isn’t my natural color.”

Kurosaki glowered, nose scrunching the way it always did as his anger ramped up. A prelude to a hissy fit. “I’m serious. It’s not like you chose what your sword or release state look like.”

Alright, that was technically true, Grimmjow would give him that much. But why then had there been a change? “The fuck happened to the old one then?”

“It was broken,” Ichigo grated out, looking more pissed off by the second as he clambered to his feet, picking up his swords as he stood. They were both covered in a fine layer of dust and sweat and thin smatterings of blood where shallow hits had landed after barriers had broken, and Grimmjow could feel a bruise blossoming on his left side where Kurosaki had driven one of his knife-like elbows in. “Can we not talk about this? These barriers don’t get tested by talking about shit from the past.”

“Touchy,” Grimmjow commented with a grin. It was a sore spot then. Nothing that digging in the knife a little deeper couldn’t take care of. Kurosaki always got so delightfully twisted up when he got emotional. And what better way to really test Tessai’s skills than to make the little Shinigami go berserk. “So, what, did you break it? Did some other fucker break it for you? Throw me a bone here, Kurosaki.”

“Did you not hear me? I don’t want to talk about it,” Kurosaki snapped at him, and Grimmjow could have _sworn_ he saw a delicious flash of gold in those brown eyes. But maybe it had only been the barrier.

“Well it’s whole now, isn’t it?” Grimmjow said, glaring murder to match Kurosaki’s defiant stare. “Stop fuckin’ moping about something that got fixed, it’s stupid.”

Stupid and dangerous, he didn’t add. The way Kurosaki talked about his swords, like he didn’t trust them just because they’d changed. Nothing good ever came out of someone wielding a sword they didn’t trust. You couldn’t swing a blade with conviction if you didn’t trust it, at least in Grimmjow’s experience. There’d been a before for him, a time before he had a sword, when the only weapon he had was himself. And that had always been easier somehow, even still it was easier when he was in his released state. But Grimmjow trusted Pantera above everything else, above anyone else. She was an extension of his _soul_ , and the only person he’d ever trusted was himself.

Kurosaki regarded him like a pest swarming around his head that he was about to smack out of the sky, his frustration almost palpable. _Perfect._

Ditching his short sword, literally dropping it to the dried earth, Kurosaki was a blur of movement as he came streaking in through Grimmjow’s peripherals, and brought his longsword down with the might of both hands against the barrier clinging to Grimmjow’s shoulder like a second skin. Grimmjow had a split second to comprehend that the attack hadn’t truly landed before the reverberation of the blow shook through his entire body like a quake. At the juncture where his right shoulder met his neck, right at the scar that Nnoitra had marred him with, Tessai’s barrier spiderwebbed out with giant cracks before shattering apart. Kurosaki jumped back as the barrier disintegrated in a hail of silver and Grimmjow stood, more dumbstruck than he would ever admit under anything but torture, amidst the sterling rain of his own broken barrier as Kurosaki watched him with eyes that were _absolutely_ gold, but gone in the next blink.

Kurosaki had always been sickly good and clean and fair, even when it would gain him nothing, even when it would cost him everything. But that strike to one of the most vulnerable points of Grimmjow’s body with all the strength he could muster in his fatigued state was the closest to a killing blow that Grimmjow had ever incited out of him. The warmth that whipped through his blood like lightning as a result of that realization was intoxicating. If Kurosaki wanted to play _like that,_ nothing would make Grimmjow happier than to kick this shit up a notch. Grinning right into those shifting eyes, Grimmjow put his fingertips to the flat side of his sword and began to summon forward a fresh torrent of reiatsu.

“Ichigo.” Yoruichi’s voice rang clear between the two of them, snapping the tension of their staring contest, drawing Kurosaki out of the daunting hunch he’d made of shoulders. “Take five. Go eat or something. I can hear your stomach from here.”

Of fuckin’ course somebody was stepping in to stop them, right as shit was getting good. Probably didn’t help that Grimmjow’s barrier was already broken and that he’d been about to release his sword, all the things he’d been instructed not to do. He hauled in a deep breath, refusing to back down from Kurosaki’s blistering glare until the bastard wordlessly did as he was told, flashing to seize his abandoned sword a few paces back, and rejoining Kisuke on the imaginary sidelines. Patience, it was all about patience, Grimmjow reminded himself, reeling his power back in. The better he played guinea pig, the faster they could fix shit in Hueco Mundo, and then Kurosaki was all his. No distractions, no interruptions, no stupid rules barring them from fighting all out.

He was watching Kurosaki’s retreating back, wondering when his own barrier of gold had disintegrated, as Yoruichi approached. “You look like you’d enjoy a dirty fight,” Yoruichi said with a sly twinkle in her gaze, a smile lazily curling at the corners of her mouth.

Grimmjow crooked an eyebrow up. “You got rules then?”

“Only whatever ones the Wonder Twins gave you,” she purred, reaching up to tighten the band that held her hair back. “Oh, and no swords.”

“No problem,” Grimmjow leered, planting Pantera into the ground and relishing the burn of his claws as they sprouted from his free hands. Grimmjow had never had the chance to fight Yoruichi before and it would be a lie to say he hadn’t entertained the idea after watching her against the sternritter. He was exhausted, but he wasn’t about to tell anybody that because it meant admitting that fighting Kurosaki for hours was enough to drain him.

“Tessai, if you would.” A pearlescent haze descended around Grimmjow for the umpteenth time that day, as a pale green barrier wrapped itself around Yoruichi, the color of it reminding him of Lilynette’s hair. She was going to be a much more difficult opponent for the sole fact that her barrier snuffed her reiatsu out entirely, almost like an empty body was standing before him. Kurosaki’s barrier had broken so often throughout their fight, that the flare of his reiatsu had left an imprint, like closing his eyes and still seeing the shadowed outline of what was around him. The flare of Kurosaki’s reiatsu had left a mark, a taste of blood in the back of his throat, one he’d never really lost.

“What are your intentions with Ichigo?” Yoruichi asked, her yellow eyes narrowed until they resembled the cat-like slits of her preferred form. _Intentions? The fuck was she on about?_

“I intend to kill him and assert myself as the superior fighter.” He thought that was obvious, but maybe Yoruichi had better things to do than to keep track of vendetta’s that weren’t her own. It was really none of his business.

“That’s it?” she pressed, a perfectly arched eyebrow raising with the question. Grimmjow definitely wasn’t trying to be purposefully dense, but he wasn’t following this line of cross-questioning.

He lunged forward instead, taking a swipe at her abdomen and missing by a hairsbreadth as she flashed out of sight. “I won’t mutilate his body and use his pretty bones to pick my teeth with, if ya ask me nicely.”

“You think he’s pretty?”

Grimmjow blanked a little, that comment coming clear out of the blue. There was an almost predatory grin curling Yoruichi’s lips up and Grimmjow studied her a moment, wondering if she’d finally lost it. Yoruichi was pretty, an absolute bombshell, and she knew it and knew how to use that fact in her favor. All lithe limbs built for speed, cheekbones and a sharp smile to disarm what she couldn’t outrun, and an arsenal of skills for when she decided someone was worth playing with. It had taken all of ten minutes after they’d first met for Grimmjow to decide that he, begrudgingly, respected and liked her. But from one kindred cat soul to another, she sounded fucking nuts.

Nothing about Kurosaki was _pretty._ Kurosaki was all sharp angles, a sharp jaw, sharp nose, sharp eyes with an equally piercing gaze, long fingers that gripped a sword until the pressure bleached his knuckles. Loud, and orange, and obnoxiously vocal about every damn thing, with a well of strength and power as seemingly endless as the white dunes of Hueco Mundo. Unyielding, stentorious, and probably too headstrong for his own good, not that Grimmjow could really cast stones there. There was nothing pretty about anyone with so much life that their vitality practically oozed out of them. No, there was nothing even remotely _pretty_ about Kurosaki fucking Ichigo.

“Haven’t flayed him open yet to check. You want a souvenir or something when I’m through with him?” Grimmjow returned her grin, letting his grow until the teeth of his mask grinded together lightly with the pull of his cheek muscle.

“No, no,” Yoruichi laughed, a delighted sound. Her next words came right at his ear as she moved, heralded by nothing but the absence of sound, even as Grimmjow whirled around to defend her attack. “He’s all yours.”

**~**

“Your barrier keeps shattering too quickly, Kurosaki-san,” Urahara noted from behind his paper fan, as if that was going to protect him from Ichigo’s barely checked anger.

“No shit,” Ichigo snapped as he returned his swords to his hip and back, and instantly regretted it as Urahara continued to watch him with patient eyes. He was so keyed up, exhausted physically and mentally, stressed out about Nel and Hueco Mundo, and at his wits end with Grimmjow _already_.

Tessai, who was beginning to look utterly spent, offered him a plate full of delicate looking finger sandwiches and a tall glass full of cloudy liquid that Ichigo could only assume was some kind of cold tea with a shit ton of reishi mixed in. He accepted both with murmured thanks, downing the entire glass in a few gulps and shoving an entire triangle of sandwich into his mouth.

“You haven’t anchored it deep enough then.”

He had to breathe in through his nose for several seconds to keep himself from mouthing off. “I don’t have anywhere deeper for it to be anchored.”

“Sure you do,” Urahara commented with a knowing look. “Perhaps some quiet time to meditate is in order. I’m sure Yoruichi-san can keep our fugitive arrancar here well sated in the meantime.”

Something about that turn of phrase set Ichigo’s teeth on edge, but he turned away, allowing Tessai to weave yet another barrier of golden kido around him. Urahara wasn’t wrong, Ichigo needed to rein it in. That last strike on Grimmjow, it was all instinct, gut-deep and delivered in a haze of rage. He was dehydrated, rabidly hungry, and in a mood where it wouldn’t be uncharacteristic for him to look up and see a black cloud hanging above his head. _Fucking Grimmjow,_ and his stupid, needling questions, and his snap observations, and his stupid all-knowing grin, shimmering all over like he was made of moonlight. Laughing at him, pushing him to the edge of his patience and then over it, darting in and out of his line of sight like a silver shooting star. Aggravating, taxing, _distracting._ Maybe meditation was a good idea.

“Fine. I’ll be over… there somewhere.” Ichigo nodded in a vague direction, palming the rest of the sandwiches on the plate and flash stepping several enormous paces away until everyone was out of earshot and eyesight.

He hauled in a deep breath and closed his eyes, wishing he could appreciate the warmth of the sun, but the barrier blocked it out. He didn’t want to meditate, didn’t want to sink into his inner world. The last time he’d been there… it had been a disaster. Worse than when he’d confronted the interject of Yhwach who had been masquerading as Zangetsu. There had been buildings destroyed during that confrontation, whole halves of them sliding down in the downpour as Ichigo was shaken to his core with the truth. The last time he’d meditated deeply enough to return, it had been months ago and he’d been in a terrible fucking state of mind, worse even than he felt now. It had been utter demolition, nearly everything lay ruined and soaked, flooded like the dams had been broken and the water left unchecked. He’d fled before he’d even been able to seek out White or Old Man Zangetsu.

It was shameful, but he was afraid. He hadn’t spoken to them since Old Man Zangetsu had nearly vanished, since they’d been reforged as two. They’d been so hard to reach, and Ichigo didn’t know if that was because of the peace he’d made with his power and his lineage, who he was truly, or if it was something Ichigo was doing wrong. They both used to be so close, twin whispers in the back of his head, and since they'd been reforged, they were almost impossible to reach. But he felt so _alone._ So utterly alone in a way he couldn’t describe to anyone, in a way that confiding in his family or his friends or his mentors wasn’t going to alleviate. _Abandoned_. Discarded by the Soul Society because he’d outlived his usefulness to them. It fucking _hurt_ in unutterable ways. And it was clear now that it was all plaguing him to a noticeable degree. He couldn’t help anybody with his head in overdrive the way it was.

Ichigo folded down like an accordion, tucking his sandaled feet under his knees and sitting crisscross on the hard ground. He crammed the last few sandwiches in his mouth, feeling just the slightest bit reenergized by the food and tea, before reaching to pull his swords free again. He balanced them flat on his knees, the shorter blade atop the longsword, the way his father had taught him in a past that felt like a lifetime ago. It was difficult to relax when his body ached and his mind refused to quiet down. Ichigo felt like a fucking idiot, unable to hold still as he fidgeted, shifted his position, brushed hair back from his forehead, plucked at the collar of his shihakusho. This far away from the action it was eerily quiet and still, no warmth of the sun or rustle of a breeze. Just the sound of his own breathing, so he tried to focus on that, let himself drop into the lull of the rise and fall. It took agonizingly long for him to steady himself. 

Slowly, the world dropped away, swallowed up by the swell of sudden water. It was a jerk reaction, to hold his breath as he sunk beneath the tide of his own despair. _Unsightly_ , that was what Tensa Zangetsu had called his flailing long ago, before Ichigo had realized he could breathe regardless of the water. So, he hauled in a lungful and let his body drift, falling slowly as the water dragged him down until he leveled himself out, landing gently on an abandoned street. The sky cartwheeled above him, a tumultuous swirl of blue, crepuscular rays of sunshine streaming down around his head like silver tinsel. Plumes of bubbles billowed up in elegant, full clouds, filtering out the burnt-ember rays of the sun. It was still an absolute disaster, Ichigo observed, chewing on his bottom lip as his eyes swept across the ravaged city block. As far as he could see, there wasn’t a skyscraper that hadn’t been destroyed. He reached to make sure he had both his swords with him before he meandered forward, treading on shattered glass and debris.

“I— I know it’s been a long time,” Ichigo said to the empty street. Something ominous was lingering everywhere, like a thin, invisible layer of ash. It was his own fucking soul, but as Ichigo traversed the desolate streets, he felt like something else, something that wasn’t _him,_ was shadowing his every step. For several minutes as he pressed on, only silence echoed back at him and the dull roar of buildings continuing to shift and fall in the distance. “I know I said I would fight on my own from then on. I’ve come for advice this time.”

_“Stop it with the fuckin’ hand-wringing act, it’s giving me secondhand embarrassment.”_

Ichigo’s head snapped to the left at the sound of White’s burbling voice. In his white shihakusho, he was sans mask, leaving the pale of his features twisted into something that bordered on disappointment as he crested a monstrous pile of debris. Old Man Zangetsu wasn’t far behind him, and the two of them stared down at Ichigo who couldn’t help but feel very small in comparison, neck craned back to look at them both.

 _“Right, well you’ve made a great fucking mess of things, again,_” White announced as he angled his feet and slid down the mountain of rubble until he hit the bottom. He regarded Ichigo coldly through his black and gold eyes, hair floating around his head in a halo of white. The longsword was strapped to his back, and Ichigo half-expected for him to draw it and attack. Instead, he sat down on a large, ruined block with a disgruntled sigh and continued to stare. _“Not to mention you’ve let a total stranger in too. Some gatekeeper you are, King.”_

“I— what? A stranger?” Ichigo glanced around as if a fourth person was going to come crawling out of the shadows, but it was still just the three of them.

Old Man Zangetsu leapt gracefully down, cloak billowing about him in the flooded world, boots soundless as they met the pavement of the road. Ichigo’s short sword was sheathed at his waist, hidden again as his cloak settled around him. “ _Surely you can sense it._ ”

The feeling of unease, like he was being watched and followed, hadn’t been just his paranoia talking then. “Do you know anything about the voice I heard? Who it belongs to? What it belongs to?”

 _“Urahara Kisuke is not wrong,_ ” Zangetsu said. _“There are things far older than the arrancar you know that still reside in Hueco Mundo. What any of those things are predates all three of us, I’m afraid. What echoes in your dreams intends you no harm, but she is far from a friend.”_

“She called me her son though. This isn’t gonna be another… _you_ situation, is it?” Ichigo asked, jutting his chin in Zangetsu’s direction, wondering if it was a bad time to crack a joke.

Zangetsu remained as stoic as he always was while White doubled over in peels of hyena-like laughter. _“You’ll have to find out for yourself. Stay your course, Ichigo. You’ve always had a strong sense of duty for your friends and it hasn’t steered you wrong before.”_

“The same things are on the line, but this time it seems so much _bigger._ Maybe because there’s still so much we don’t know.” White blinked owlishly back at him as Ichigo met his gaze briefly. “I don’t— _I can’t_ let this end the way the war did.”

 _“No,”_ Zangetsu agreed, pausing to look around at the ruins of Ichigo’s drowned inner world. _“I doubt we’d survive something like that again.”_

White made no move to disagree with that sentiment, choosing instead to bare his usual unhinged grin. _“Don’t you even think about kicking the bucket before we can fight that Espada all out again. I’ll kill you myself if you try.”_

Ichigo couldn’t help but groan aloud at that statement. “Grimmjow, really? What is it with everybody?”

 _“I like him,”_ White said with a maniacal grin. When Ichigo balked at him, wondering why he was so shocked considering how alike Grimmjow and White were, he shrugged nonchalantly. _“He makes us feel alive, and we’re on short order of people who do that nowadays.”_

“Well,” Ichigo conceded, chest and shoulders heaving as he sucked in a deep breath, letting it go in a stream of bubbles. “He’ll probably kill me first if I break my second promise.”

 _“I’m itching to show him what we can really do,”_ White laughed, shit-eating grin so wide it nearly split his face. _“To cut a cocky bastard like him down to size again would be a pleasure.”_

 _“It would be wise not to underestimate him,”_ Zangetsu intoned, casting a vaguely disapproving glance in White's direction. _“Lest you forget about what has attached itself to his spirit ribbon, and therefore to his soul. There is a power there that mirrors what I sense around us, and you don’t know the extent of what he’s been given, or how he got it.”_

A confirmation of what Ichigo had already concluded: he was going to have to confront Grimmjow again and lay some more cards on the table to get the answers he was looking for. There had to be something else Grimmjow was keeping to himself, something he hadn’t told Urahara and this was no time for secrets. They were going to have to tell Grimmjow what they’d discovered after knocking him unconscious. Ichigo felt okay assuming that Urahara hadn’t done so yet because he also assumed the outburst from Grimmjow as a result wasn’t going to be a small thing. They'd never leave the bunker at this rate. 

“He thinks he’s going to get to fight the version of me that fought Ulquiorra. It’ll be a minor bummer when he finds out I can’t assume that form anymore, but I’m kinda jazzed at the idea of firing a Gran Rey Cero at him myself.” White said nothing at that, just continued to grin, and Ichigo plucked at the sleeve of his shihakusho, taking note of the thing he’d really come all this way for. “I need to be able to anchor this kido barrier Tessai-san has cast on me so it doesn’t break. I— I’m not sure how to do that.”

Ichigo waited with bated breath as the two of them approached him. He wasn’t swathed in gold in the inner world, but they seemed to know what he was referring to. Zangetsu circled him once and White stared with a cocked head and a crooked grin. One after the other, they placed a hand on each of his shoulders and drew back, a trail of gold like a single strand of a spiderweb clinging to each of their hands. White grabbed a hold of the thread, and rotated his wrist, wrapping the gold around it several times like a bracelet. Zangetsu twirled the thread around one index finger, leaving a band that glinted like a ring there, both tied to Ichigo by a gossamer strand of gold.

 _“There, that should hold,”_ Zangetsu declared as Ichigo marveled at the way the gold glittered in the water. _“Now go, this world is in disrepair and the tools you need to fix it are out there, Ichigo.”_

“I’ll come back,” he promised and watched White roll his uncanny eyes at his sentimentality. The barest of smiles turned up the corners of Old Man Zangetsu’s mouth before his inner world dissolved in a wash of white and he was wrenched back.

When he opened his eyes, he was no longer glimmering gold, but he could still feel the anchor holding strong, like a weight in his chest. In the back of his mind, there was a flicker of approaching warmth, and Ichigo sighed in resignation, knowing the peace and quiet he’d been granted was about to end. He felt Yoruichi as she settled herself behind him, her knees knocking against his lower back as she mirrored his position and sat on the dry earth. She was quiet at first, reaching up only to grab ahold of Ichigo’s shoulders and digging her nimble fingers into the tense muscle there. For a minute, they were both silent, just the quiet stillness of their breathing, and her hands sliding across the fabric of his shihakusho. She smelled of warm spices, cardamom and clove, like the Chai tea she often drank at night, and Ichigo wondered what time it was beyond the eternal sunshine of the bunker.

“You’re all keyed up again, or still, it’s hard to tell these days. Worried about Nel?”

Ichigo winced a little as her fingers pressed roughly down the length of his spine to his mid-back. “And Hueco Mundo, and us, and Grimmjow,” Ichigo said his name like it was a curse, shoulders sagging under the loosening pressure. He moved to place his swords on the ground in front of him so he could slouch out his meditative posture. “I’m sure Urahara-san has told you all about what we both told him, separately.”

“He did. And here I thought calling Orihime for some healing and introspection would have helped.”

So, contacting Inoue had been for more than a ‘competent healing’, just as he’d believed. Yoruichi thought she was so clever sometimes, or maybe it was that she had to resort to truly simple things to make sure the job got done and Ichigo was the one thinking he was clever for figuring it all out. “It did. She’s the one that let me talk myself into this.”

“Figure your barrier out?”

“Yeah, with some help.”

“Did you find any answers within?” she asked lightly, but Ichigo didn’t know how to respond to that, needing more time to mull it all over, and she must have known. Yoruichi was in the business of tough-love massages, or so she always called them. The more pressure applied all at once before you eased out of it slowly, the better the muscle felt in her not-so-expert opinion. Her hands smoothed across the planes of his shoulder blades, sharp fingers knuckling any knots they drifted over. “Well, nobody is coercing you to help us.”

Ichigo paused, he knew she was testing the waters with him, trying to gauge his state of mind without asking forthright. “They’re my friends. And, besides, I made a promise.”

“To who?”

Frowning, Ichigo leaned back until his head bonked against Yoruichi’s and she squawked in protest. “Mind your business. You go sniffing around the affairs of other people staying here like that and they’re definitely gonna bite your nose off.”

“Speaking of noses and sticking them where they don’t belong, Grimmjow called your bones pretty earlier, so at least you have that to go on.” She punctuated her comment by driving her elbow right into the tender muscle of his left trapezius, making him yelp at the sudden burst of pain. She shushed him from behind like some kind of mother trying to quiet a crying baby before really going at the spot with both thumbs.

“Go on? Where am I going with that?” he demanded, forcing himself to relax under her torture, lest he get smacked upside the back of the head per usual. “That’s the most serial killer shit anyone’s ever said about me, including stuff Kurotsuchi has said that never bears repeating.”

“Well, you have bones in your face, so he obviously thinks your face is pretty. A plus B equals C, Ichigo, that’s grade school math. And you think his face is pretty. So…” Yoruichi made obnoxious kissy noises from behind him as she dug a thumb so deep into the meat of his right shoulder he swore he could feel it in his toes.

Ichigo fended off the instantly curious mental image of what kissing Grimmjow would be like with a white-knuckled determination that impressed even himself. “Why, may I regret asking, are you trying to set me up with Grimmjow, of all people? Grimmjow, the psychopath, the guy who’d probably snatch candy from babies and steal money from wishing wells. I’m not some lonely, desperate—”

She let out a gusty sigh like he was some good-for-nothing himbo she was trying to convey a simple concept to. “In Vino Veritas, Ichigo. Don’t think I was so drunk I’ve forgotten all about our moonshine chat.”

“We didn’t chat about anything,” he insisted, hoping that if they had, he’d at least remember. Fuck that paint-stripper booze and the bitch that brought it home, he was never going to drink it again. “How about we focus on the things we _can_ control, and not _Grimmjow_ , who is definitely not one of those things.”

“I don’t know, sounds like it only took a punch to the face to get him to fall in line. A real heart-to-heart connection if I’ve ever seen one.”

Something, a muscle maybe, who the fuck knew anymore, twitched in Ichigo’s left eye. “Listen, Dr. Phil, I’m not interested. I’m good, everybody’s good, find another teenager to interrogate.”

“Except that you’re not _good_ because you’re hearing a voice that doesn’t belong to you that’s causing you pain.” The sudden sincerity and gravity in her tone blindsided him for a moment, but it was Yoruichi he was talking to after all. “And don’t even pretend that Kisuke didn’t tell me about you fisting Grimmjow’s Hollow hole. Sexual frustration is a natural side effect of teenage-dom. But c’mon, Ichigo, you gotta start slow, you know, work up to a whole fist.”

“No, nope, absolutely not,” Ichigo said with finality, shrugging her off of him as she howled with laughter, rolling onto her back like a bug playing dead as he grabbed his swords and stood up. He sheathed them swiftly, trying to ignore the inexplicable burn in his face.

“Food for thought!” she called after him in between fits of giggling as he hoofed it towards the ladder.

No thoughts at all if Ichigo could help it. They had a plan that needed working on and Ichigo needed sleep that wasn’t plagued by the visage of the arrancar he had failed to save once before, or the old nemesis he’d barely defeated. The blue-haired bastard wasn’t the only one, there was Nel and Harribel, and anyone else potentially left and suffering in Hueco Mundo. The universe couldn’t revolve around Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, at least until the worlds were safe and Ichigo was forced to make good on his stupid, reckless, good for nothing promise.


	10. Open A Vein

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to each and every one of you for your thoughtful, wonderful comments on the last chapter. They really helped me push through with this one. It's been a rough couple of weeks for me, but here ya go!  
> I hope you're all staying safe and healthy. Wash your hands, eat good food, stay inside. Be smart, be safe, be kind. I love y'all ❤️

**~  
  
**

_“I got what I wanted—  
a boy swimming toward me.  
Except I was no shore, Ma.  
I was driftwood  
trying to remember what I had broken from  
to get here.”_

  
Ocean Vuong, **On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous**

**~**

“Ichigo, oh my _god_ ,” was the first thing he heard as he pulled himself up through the bunker hole and back into the shop. The first and only thing he saw was Kon streaking towards him with unnatural speed until Ichigo had a mouthful of the singular button sewn to his stomach. “They told me they chopped you up and buried you down there!”

Tumbling gracelessly onto terra firma, Ichigo reached up to peel Kon from his face, holding him by the scruff of his little lion neck as he flailed his plush limbs. It took a moment for Ichigo’s eyes to adjust to the low light of the room in comparison to the bright bunker. Urahara was once again stationed at the table, nursing what could only be a cup of warm sake considering how the entire day had gone. Tessai was beside him, glasses placed on the tabletop, a large hand holding a cold compress directly over his eyes. Behind him came the huff of Yoruichi as she hoisted herself out of the bunker and kicked the latch closed with a flick of her foot. And across the room, leaning against the wall, half in shadow like some sort of absolute edge-lord, was Grimmjow, blue eyes flitting between all of them as he took in the scene.

He gave Kon a onceover, making sure all his seams were intact and nothing had happened to him. “Why the hell would you believe something like that?”

“Because it was convincing!” Kon insisted with an indignant cry as he kicked helplessly at the air. “Urahara tricked me, and Yoruichi-sama said she’d bring your dick back up so at least I’d have something to take home to your family, and the blue one just started to laugh.”

“ _Kon_ ,” Ichigo hissed, wondering if it would be a favor to them all if he reached down Kon’s throat right then and pulled his pill out. “Why are you here?”

“Because it’s _night_ and somebody told his family he’d ‘text them if he was going to be late’ and then that somebody _didn’t_.” With a melodramatic huff and another useless swing of his legs, Kon crossed his arms across his chest. “We were concerned.”

Halfway up the bunker ladder, Ichigo had begun to feel a little lightheaded. The combination of strenuous training and testing a new ability, the lack of sleep and food and hydration were all catching up to him in the same glorious moment. He blinked dazedly at Kon’s incensed hissy fit, aware of blue eyes watching him from a corner of the room, too much like an owl observing its prey from afar. The room was silent save for the slamming of a door upstairs somewhere as Yoruichi did who knew what and Ichigo stifled the sigh that wanted to escape.

“I’m fine,” Ichigo replied loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. Kon was still staring at him though, staring at him with all the awareness of someone who knew _too much_ , certainly much more than anyone else present did or needed to.

“You don’t look fine,” Kon whispered conspiratorially, even going so far as to hold a paw up to one side of his mouth as if that was going to keep his voice from carrying.

“ _Kon_ ,” Ichigo muttered again in warning and got an exaggerated sigh in response. He looked up and met Urahara’s gaze. “Did you get Nel’s report?” He didn’t miss the way Grimmjow seemed to stiffen at the question, sitting forward enough that one of his luminously blue eyes moved into the light and threw it back like he’d been caught by the flash of a camera.

“I did,” Urahara said with a smile that was still too sharp for him to be inebriated quite yet. “Sit, sit, care for a drink?” he asked, gesturing at the open sake bottle and the other unused glasses sitting in a cluster in the center of the table.

“Pass,” he groaned as he slumped down at the table opposite Urahara, every last fiber of him exhausted. He was pushing it, could feel the warning in his body, could feel the lethargy that had bled into his head, marring his thoughts. But he was afraid to rest after the fiasco earlier: the dream, the pain, the voice. It was hard to distinguish the throb of his shoulder now through the throb in the rest of his body. Some of it was welcome, muscles that hadn’t ached this way in a while, considering how long it had been since he’d had a decent fight out of anybody. Grimmjow hadn’t pulled his sword swings, not by a long shot. Ichigo knew he was likely a canvas of bruises under his uniform, and he wondered how Grimmjow was fairing. He certainly hadn’t held back either.

“Care to join us, Grimmjow? You both are the last to get caught up to speed.”

“I’m good from right here,” came the gruff reply from the shadows and the only thing that saved Ichigo from looking over at him was the sensation of Kon climbing into his lap.

“You’ve got a plan based on decent information, right?” Ichigo questioned warily, slumping forward over the table to plant one elbow down and prop his head up. Kon wiggled his way up so he could get his plush arms flat on the table to peer over it, standing on his tiptoes atop Ichigo’s aching calves.

“The beginnings of one,” Urahara admitted before taking a deep swig of his sake. “Our ever-valiant Nel reports that the centering poles I gifted her and Harribel are working to stabilize the levels and effects in Hueco Mundo. She says the levels are still far too low, but the tremors have stopped. The destruction of the remains of Las Noches were minimal as a result.”

 _Safe,_ was all Ichigo heard in that, and something loosened in his chest. Nel was strong, and Harribel had to be too, all things considered. But Ichigo doubted that anyone could survive their world collapsing. “Can’t we make them more poles? If they’re like the one you made for Rukia to stab me with, couldn’t we just put enough spiritual energy in them to maybe raise Hueco Mundo’s levels?”

Urahara grimaced slightly as if he’d already considered that. “The last time I did that, Kurosaki-san, I had the assistance of the entire seated company of the Gotei 13, captains and their lieutenants, including the then Captain Commander.” He sighed, shoulders visibly slumping, and a flighty, hysterical feeling began to bloom in Ichigo’s gut. “It took _all_ of that to bring just _your_ Shinigami powers back. We also haven’t decided if involving the Soul Society in this matter is in our best interest yet. The power it would take to reinvigorate an entire world…”

Things began to click into place amidst his fatigue, and the picture that his brain was painting was a bleak one. Four poles, only three left now, that weren’t helping to increase levels, only holding them steady. A bandaid slapped haphazardly over a gushing wound. The frenzied sense of doom blossomed further, feeling like a brick in the pit of his stomach. “How long will the pole they’re currently using last for?”

“Undetermined,” Urahara replied, throwing back the rest of his sake in one gulp. “I have asked Nel to monitor this one so we can calculate it. They only have three remaining after this one, so hopefully it doesn’t deplete too quickly.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be some genius scientist?” Grimmjow finally piped in from the corner of the room. Instinctively, Ichigo’s own shoulders ratcheted up a fraction of an inch upon hearing the anger in his tone. He glanced sidelong at Grimmjow, out of the fringe of his hair, and caught sight of blue eyes spitting fire in a stony face. “You made those fucking poles and apparently put enough energy in them to stabilize everything, so just do it _again._ If you can keep Hueco Mundo stable long enough, you’ll have time to think of something better.”

Ichigo decided to put all his chips in and turned to look at Grimmjow fully. He was sitting with his legs drawn up, arms draped overtop his knees, giving Urahara a blistering look. It wasn’t the worst idea ever, Ichigo could admit internally. Maybe creating and using more poles was still a sort of bandaid measure, but there couldn’t be any harm in buying more time with them. Urahara was brilliant, he had to be able to create something useful in the allotted time. They obviously couldn’t let Hueco Mundo potentially collapse considering that would probably end with some triple world destroying consequences.

“While a logical conclusion, it took myself, Tessai-san, and Yoruichi-san months to make the four of them, exhausting our reiryoku daily to achieve that feat.” Urahara drummed his fingers on the table, sake and empty cup forgotten, clearly lost in thought. “It was dangerous, experimental, and rather stupid considering it made us vulnerable to attack had something decided to come along.”

“Well now you’ve got me, and Kurosaki.” Grimmjow looked like a dog with a bone, unwilling to give it up now that he had it in his jaws.

Again, Ichigo thought feeling both astonished and a little guilty that he was so shocked that Grimmjow had come to that theory so quickly. It wasn’t a bad idea. Ichigo certainly had reiryoku to burn, so to speak. Grimmjow probably did too, considering his weird power up that was still a mystery. Between the five of them, they could make it happen, work on a schedule and take shifts pouring reiryoku into new poles. But then—

“We would still have to get there undetected,” Tessai finally spoke up, voicing Ichigo’s exact thoughts. He shifted the cold compress away from his eyes to peer blearily around the room. “We would have the necessary materials and ability to mask our presence, but opening a Garganta would alert the Soul Society whether we or Mr. Jaegerjaquez did so.”

The room descended into silence as they all seemed to fall into deep thought. Ichigo pictured the Garganta, the black maw opening to a frigid wasteland of a world. He tried not to think of Grimmjow, drenched in blood, battle-weary and damaged as he opened one and fell into. It was hard not to considering that was the last time he’d _seen_ a Garganta with his own two eyes. It wasn’t like Nel and Harribel had been vacationing in the Living World, not with the world divider and tentative peace treaty as a looming threat. The only spirits Ichigo saw other than his main group of friends were just mindless Hollows looking for a meal, coming through a—

“Could we slip through a Garganta made by a Hollow entering the Living World? Like a Menos or something? That way, we aren’t opening one of our own and alerting everybody.”

Tessai slid the compress away from his eyes again, even reached out to pick up his glasses and don them once more, turning to give Ichigo a contemplative look. He shifted his gaze to Urahara whose head was cocked to one side, arms crossed over his chest, probably trying to compute that idea. “It is technically a Garganta,” Tessai rumbled, mustache bristling.

“We wouldn’t know where it would dump us out though,” Urahara commented, one arm moving to cradle his own jaw, fingers drumming away against his cheek. “We could end up running through Hueco Mundo for days, even weeks, like what happened when you went to rescue Inoue.”

“The whole fuckin’ point is to plant those poles,” Grimmjow snapped, clearly growing fed up with all the talk that wasn’t being followed up with direct action. “So, we stabilize Hueco Mundo first, no matter where we wind up, and then we head for Las Noches.”

Another pregnant pause filled the room, and though Tessai and Urahara continued to look thoughtful, neither of them made any disagreeable noise to say that plan wouldn’t work.

“Great, that’s a good enough plan to start on for me,” Ichigo sighed, too exhausted to continue participating in their brainstorming session. Things were beginning to fuzz over both mentally and visually. If they thought of something better in the meantime, they’d just have to catch him up to speed again. “Where’s my body?” he asked, eyes sweeping the room for a stray foot or a tuft of his own orange hair.

“Upstairs in the guest room,” Yoruichi said suddenly, thumping off the last stair. She had a small towel in one hand that she was running through her dripping hair, fresh from a shower. “Don’t worry, I tucked you in.” She threw him a wink before disappearing straight into the kitchen.

“My house is your house, Kurosaki-san!” Urahara garbled out around a mouthful of newly poured sake, evidently of the same mind that they’d all exhausted their mental capacities for one day.

Knees creaking in protest, Ichigo climbed to his feet without another word and headed for the stairs. The soft pad of Kon’s feet dashing across the floor sounded behind him before plush paws caught ahold of the ankle of his shihakusho and climbed upward, scaling his body with ease to hang over his shoulder.

“The fuck is that bear thing?” he heard Grimmjow ask just as he got a foot on the first step.

Ichigo ducked his head out from around the stairs to give the arrancar an exasperated frown. “My emotional support animal,” he retorted, trying to tamp down the smile that threatened to break his facade when Kon giggled right in his ear. “And piss off, he’s a lion.”

“You guys are really going to try and sneak back into Hueco Mundo?” Kon asked quietly as Ichigo ascended the stairs, taking them two at a time but gripping the railing for much needed stability.

“Maybe we can be of more help if we’re there. Urahara-san would be able to play around and test things, see this tomb Nel says she found,” Ichigo murmured back as he slid the guestroom door open and closed it quietly behind himself. A small lamp on a table in the corner of the room cast a diffuse yellow glow across the sparsely decorated space.

“What about that nightmare you had? You said it was different.” Kon had always been quick to put two-and-two together, sharp-witted enough to read a situation and assemble any other pieces he picked up. Of course he wasn’t going to just let Ichigo’s earlier meltdown go so easily. Ichigo couldn’t begrudge him for coming off as nosy; Kon just wanted the best for him, to protect him. He stuck his arm out at a downward slope, old habit, and let Kon slide down it to the floor with a soft thump.

“It was different, maybe even related if Urahara-san was telling me the truth earlier.” Ichigo chewed at the inside of his cheek in thought as he ambled over to his body that had indeed been tucked in, his hand lying atop his clothed dick under the blankets and angled in a very specific way. Yoruichi thought she was just so god damn funny. “I guess there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know. But if we go there, we might get answers. We might even be able to find out what really happened to Grimmjow, seeing as how nobody wants to ask him directly.”

It was more than that though, and he’d never admit it out loud, not to anyone, not even to Kon. He was exhausted, listless, and abandoned. Without a battlefield to wage a war on, without an enemy to join forces against, without a cause to contribute his powers and experiences to, this mission was Ichigo’s newfound and only purpose. Soul Society had all but put him in a box and left him on a curb somewhere, miles from anything even remotely familiar. Miles from his friends on that side, people he cared about, wanted to see and talk to again. It filled his head with awful, stupidly self-sabotaging shit, like all he was good for was fighting, for battle and nothing more. Like being trapped in a black void, endless and all-consuming, running in all directions and never finding a wall, screaming and screaming until his voice gave out and never even hearing an echo. It was a yawning chasm within him, growing deeper and darker with every passing day that he was left to his own devices, desperately trying to shove something into that abyss to make it feel even a little smaller. This barely constructed plan was all he had to cling to.

“Blue? He’s scary looking, and he looks at you like you’re something to eat,” Kon commented in his blasé way, making Ichigo stutter in his movement of drawing the blanket down from his human body. _Something to eat?_ For fuck’s sake, what kind of garbage media had the mod soul been consuming when Ichigo wasn’t looking?

“Shut up, Kon.” He slid into his motionless body, gritting his teeth against the surge of sensation as he settled back into his own skin, hauling a breath into stale lungs.

His body wasn’t beat up, but he could still feel the soul-deep ache from the training earlier. He took a moment to stretch, an assortment of joints and vertebrae popping and cracking with his movements, before sitting up. Bathroom so he could piss and maybe splash some water on his face, and then he was grabbing Kon and cheesing it out of there. Maybe he could talk his dad into slipping him an Ambien or something just this one time. The possibility of a restful, dreamless sleep via a controlled substance issued by an actual physician was more tempting than attempting to overdose on Nyquil and having his only-sort-of-human body burn it off before he could even fall asleep _again_.

“Stay here, I’ll be right back,” he muttered at the floor as he scrubbed a hand down his face and meandered towards the door. There was only the softest of pings in the back of his aching head as a forewarning before he threw the guestroom door open to a fresh headache waiting for him in the dark. Grimmjow was standing in the hallway right outside the guestroom door, slouching against the wall, hands jammed in the pockets of his jumpsuit. His chin was nearly tucked to his chest, only looking up through dark lashes and mussed hair to look at Ichigo as he emerged from the doorway.

“What?” Ichigo demanded, voice colder than he felt. He didn’t like the gleam in Grimmjow’s eyes though, eyes the same shade of haunting blue they’d always been.

“Ichigo, you shouldn’t—” Came Kon’s voice from the dark room behind him, but Ichigo yanked the door shut on the mod soul, cutting his voice and anything he was about to say off.

“I have a question for you.”

Ichigo narrowed his eyes in mildly warranted suspicion. Grimmjow wasn’t an ask-questions kind of guy, at least not in Ichigo’s experience with him which he believed to be considerable. Grimmjow was a shoot-first-ask-questions-never kind of guy. But maybe Ichigo had been misjudging him all along. Grimmjow sure had been quick to come up with some bona fide ideas, starting with the kido barriers to mask their reiatsu signatures, and now the potential plan of how they were all going to weasel their way back into Hueco Mundo. But Ichigo still couldn’t ditch the sneaking suspicion, one that was heavily punctuated by the eerie detached voice of someone that didn’t belong to him still echoing somewhere within him, that they were all playing into someone else’s – maybe even Grimmjow’s – hand.

“That’s nice. I don’t think I have any answers for you,” Ichigo said, trying to stifle a yawn.

If they all survived this newest disaster, Ichigo should think about writing a book on all the ways to instantly piss of Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, a how-to guide for other clearly suicidal morons like himself. Maybe if he pissed him off enough, Grimmjow would snap and just monologue his entire master plan like a cheesy villain in a bad movie and then they’d all be on the same page. Why hadn’t Urahara told Grimmjow about the black in his spirit ribbon? Why had no one bothered to ask about the weird little power-up of his that they discovered? Did Grimmjow know about it? Or was this another _I didn’t know I was dead_ segment of their bullshit reality?

Grimmjow’s nose wrinkled immediately and he stood up from the wall, hands still in his pockets though that did nothing to detract from the outright threat emanating from him. Ever the personal space violator, he stepped right up to Ichigo, using all two inches of their height difference to his best advantage. “It’s one simple question, it’d take like two fucking seconds to answer it.”

Ichigo didn’t bother to swallow down his own burgeoning anger and squared his shoulders, crossing his arms over his chest as he glared back, committing to the zero to sixty acceleration he was about to push this conversation into. “Well I’m not going to, so die mad about it, Grimmjow.”

They were practically nose to nose, snarling in each other’s faces like a couple of animals having a pack dispute when a quiet voice sluiced through the charged atmosphere building around them, between them.

“Maybe you two should just kiss, to ease the tension. That’s what they do in all those novels Urahara-san pretends aren’t his.” Came the voice from below them and they both staggered apart like they’d been shoved, looking down to see Ururu staring placidly up at them with her wide, purple eyes.

Unjustified heat flooded Ichigo’s face, racing into his cheeks and his ears, spreading down the back of his neck. Just like Yoruichi’s earlier mental sabotage, an image of what it would be like to navigate that Hollow mask full of sharp-looking teeth so it didn’t rub his cheek raw, trying to kiss someone who only ever snarled with all his teeth bared… Ichigo strangled that idea out with his bare hands. God damn conniving Yoruichi and all the shit she thought she knew. He couldn’t stop staring though, no matter how badly he wished he could because he could only imagine what it looked like. Gawping at Grimmjow with wide-eyes like some sort of moron while a child who just insinuated that they should kiss to end their argument stared up at the two of them innocently, a sweet smile on her face. He couldn’t have been more grateful for the dark hallway than he was right then. Ichigo should call fucking CPS or something, Urahara and Yoruichi were clearly corrupting Ururu and Jinta’s youth. She was the same age as Karin and Yuzu, and way too young to be reading whatever smutty romance novels Urahara was harboring somewhere. Everything sounded fuzzy beyond the blood rushing in his ears as he stared at Grimmjow, eyes still as wide as teacup saucers.

“It ain’t like that, pipsqueak.” He heard Grimmjow say almost patiently to Ururu, voice devoid of even a quarter of the mortification that Ichigo was feeling.

“Don’t read those books, they’ll rot your brain,” Ichigo stammered out, face cooling a few degrees. He was done now, thoroughly done. He needed a gallon of reishi infused something and a sedative. Ururu passed between the two of them without another word, head swiveling left and then right to look at both of them before descending the stairs. Shoulders just about up around his ears, body as taut as a tightrope, Ichigo moved to follow her, having no intention of continuing their dead-end conversation.

Naturally, Grimmjow had other ideas. “I ain’t done talking to you, Kurosaki.” Long, cold fingers caught his wrist and pulled back in an attempt to slow his momentum.

“Don’t touch me,” Ichigo hissed out, yanking his wrist from Grimmjow’s grasp so hard he nearly wrenched it. He wrapped his own fingers around the same spot, cradling his very human and now aching wrist to his chest.

“We both know _someone_ who could probably power those poles for your pals in the other room,” Grimmjow commented lowly, a mean smirk twisting his face, visible even in the dim lighting. “Only you’re too chicken shit to tell them.”

“I tried to tell you before, only you never listen: I can’t assume that form anymore.” Ichigo hissed, glancing sidelong down the stairs to make sure no one was standing at the base of them where anyone could have heard Grimmjow’s poor excuse for a whisper. “My soul is balanced now, blah, blah, hippy shit.”

Grimmjow’s nasty expression blinked out like a blown lightbulb. “You tellin’ me you _can’t_ put a Hollow mask on anymore?” Withdrawing his other hand from his pocket, he raked it through his hair in frustration, lip curling back as he looked away from Ichigo briefly. “For shit’s sake, Kurosaki, you’re definitely not worth fighting now! You coulda fuckin’ told me—”

He stopped talking when he caught Ichigo grinning, going so far as to rock back on the heels of his boots to give Ichigo a onceover from head to toe. “Oh, you’re gonna have to work for this one, you asshat,” Ichigo laughed lightly though it did nothing to alleviate the unease building between them again. It certainly wasn’t a comment that sat well with the blue-haired menace before him either.

Grimmjow had never pulled his punches, had never gone easy on Ichigo, so it shouldn’t have been such a shock that he wouldn’t pull his punches verbally either, even with their tentative cease fire agreement. He always gave as good as he got and Ichigo had only been shoveling him shit since he’d opened the door. Something jumped in his bare cheek, twitching the one corner of his mouth into a fleeting, dangerous half-smile. “Yeah, the way you made Aizen work for it? The way you made that Quincy god work for it?”

It was like being struck with lightning, rage so pure and potent whipping through him, making even the tips of his fingers tingle. “ _You_ ,” Ichigo reviled with all the venom in his soul. He sneered into Grimmjow’s face, ignored the blatant bark of a twin warning in the back of his head that he was crossing a line, and stabbed a finger into Grimmjow’s chest. “You have no idea what I gave up to just to defeat Aizen, the asshole with a god complex that _you_ agreed to follow and fight under. You have no idea what I gave up to take on Yhwach.”

Grimmjow’s expression grew even colder. “It’s cute that you think that decision was entirely consensual.” Wait, _what_? Ichigo’s eyes widened, arm dropping back to his side, mouth opening to pursue that fresh bit of information, but Grimmjow plowed on. “And, I wasn’t there, remember? I _died_.”

The whiplash, the one-eighty, the give and take that never ended. Ichigo Kurosaki was going to be in a stalemate standoff with Grimmjow fucking Jaegerjaquez until the end of time. “Stop trying to feed me bullshit.”

An inferno of righteous fury seemed to blaze to life in Grimmjow’s eyes, and Ichigo could have sworn he heard something click in the bastard’s jaw as he clenched it. But there was an implosion happening in real-time, a controlled demolition as Grimmjow shuttered in on himself, reining himself in. A pilot-light of barely restrained rage. “Must be exhausting,” Grimmjow jeered, stupid pinchy eyebrows all scrunched up in a savage snarl. “Navigating your shitty human life with that savior complex they’ve instilled in you.”

It felt like being struck by lightning twice. Ichigo swayed back slightly, hands clenching into involuntary fists at his sides. “ _Fuck you_ ,” he spat.

Grimmjow’s grin was slow like molasses, a flash of sharp canines and even sharper eyes. “No, no, that was a really moving speech. I’m sure no one has ever or will ever understand you, boo-hoo and all that bullshit,” he mocked, cocking his head back to look down his nose at Ichigo, expression glacier-cold, body language screaming barely controlled violence. “Don’t worry, Kurosaki, you won’t receive any demands from me.”

Ichigo wanted to laugh, he wanted to throw his head back and let out the fakest, most obnoxious laugh he could muster. He’d get outright punched in the face for it, but even a broken nose would be better than the conversation they were having. “Oh, _bullshit_. You’ve already demanded a fight to the death five separate times.”

“No, I’m just forcing you to honor the promise you made. Don’t make em if you don’t intend on keepin’ em.” Grimmjow continued to smile, but it was a vapid, joyless curl of his lips. “Talk to me after you’ve died alone in a ditch somewhere and your soul rots from the inside out and turns you into a monster, Kurosaki. Maybe then I’ll be in the mood to put up with you and your fuckin’ sob story.”

Ichigo was reeling, felt like someone who’d been dangling from a fraying rope that finally snapped and now he was plummeting. But he couldn’t show that— Grimmjow couldn’t be allowed to see that. It was easier to just keep swinging and hope for a good hit than it was to tap out, to surrender. “Can’t you be a decent person for like three seconds so that we can stop the potential end of the world and make sure we all get out of this alive? News flash, jackass, you can’t fight me to the death if we’re _already dead_.” 

**~**

Grimmjow really had come upstairs with a single question he wanted an answer to, intent on cornering Kurosaki and getting him to squeal. He wanted to know why Kurosaki had acted so suspicious while down in the bunker, what he could know that would make him act that way. Grimmjow hadn’t wanted a hushed conversation in a hallway and to get blitzed out of the blue by one of Kisuke’s child charges trying to play wingman. Nor did he really want the subsequent realization that Kurosaki wouldn’t be able to run his stupid mouth if it was busy doing other things. Shit with Kurosaki always ended in an argument, or a fight when he lucked out, but it was exhausting. Nine times out of ten, they parted ways and Grimmjow was left more pissed off than before and with more questions than he started with and zero answers. But the asshole was just asking for it now. It was too easy to be divisive, too easy to sink his teeth in, lock his jaw, and refuse to let go.

“I already agreed to your truce,” he growled into the dark of the hallway. He could see the outline of Kurosaki just fine, could trace his jaw and his nose, the whites of his eyes in the dismal lighting. All snarl and spitfire even without a gilded barrier shining around him. “I agreed to help, but don’t think for a fuckin’ minute I want to spend my time in a pity-party with _you._ ”

For one delicious moment, reiryoku surged to the surface of Kurosaki’s human skin, wickedly hot and potent, like stepping out of the shade and into the bright sun. And something started to burn low in Grimmjow’s gut as all that power washed over him for an instant, dampened by the meatsuit of his fragile human body, but still distinct, sharp. Kurosaki had never threatened him the way he so often enjoyed doing, taking immense pleasure in watching the Shinigami get riled up. But that brief flare of power, a reminder of who was standing in front of him and what he was capable of, was enough of a threat to bring a smile back to Grimmjow’s face.

He wanted to tear into Kurosaki right then and there, draw his sword, maybe put it through the bastard’s guts instead of his shoulder this time, if only to prove a point. But their agreement hinged on Grimmjow behaving himself, and disemboweling Kurosaki for some quick, cheap thrills wasn’t going to get him any closer to the fight of his life. One that would potentially put him face to face with Kurosaki’s Hollow again. _White,_ but not White according to the mouthy jerk, at least not the mask he remembered, and apparently not the one that killed Ulquiorra either. Just more fuckin’ questions. It wasn’t surrender if he misdirected, right? If he just talked over Kurosaki’s blatant power move, maybe he could still get the answer he was looking for.

“Why’d you act so suspicious around Kisuke earlier?” he demanded outright, even acquiescing enough to take half a step out of Kurosaki’s space.

The effect was immediate, and so was his disappointment as Kurosaki’s power snuffed right out, leaving Grimmjow’s skin feeling almost cold somehow. “ _What?_ ” Kurosaki blurted stupidly, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline.

Grimmjow resisted the urge to roll his eyes, forced himself to even tuck his hands back into his pockets in an attempt to placate. “That’s the fuckin’ question I was going to ask you before you threw your little hissy fit.”

Kurosaki eyed him, the same way he’d looked him over when Grimmjow had initially told him he had a question: like there was something fishy about the fact that he was trying to get information out of him. The paranoia seemed misplaced, out of character, though Grimmjow probably couldn’t say he knew Kurosaki well enough to think that. It was a completely full circle again; no spark, no confidence, questioning his friends’ motives. Maybe it was just one of those things people didn’t talk about out loud, but Grimmjow hadn’t missed the way Kurosaki’s eyes always drifted to heavy shadows either. Like he was expecting something to jump out at him all the time. The ongoing mystery of the dark circles under his ochre eyes, the exhaustion that seemed to bleed out of every line of him. That fatigue was there now, even as both of their anger fizzled out and Kurosaki warily reproached him, lips parting on a frustrated huff.

“Urahara is a mastermind, he practically created the art of finding loopholes,” he finally responded, voice a quiet, tired rasp. “He compartmentalizes everything, tucks it all away and then just _happens_ to forget key details when they matter.”

Grimmjow weighed that information for a moment, watched the way Kurosaki’s eyes darted even then to the darker corners of the hallway and back to him. Kisuke was crafty, sure, but Grimmjow didn’t think the guy was devious by any means. Devious people didn’t bend over backwards to help others, to protect them, to save them. Didn’t make shoddy truces with former enemies to help comrades, or even go out of their way to put said former enemies back together. And despite the fact that he always ignored them, Kurosaki seemed to have decent instincts. It made Grimmjow wonder just what had happened in the past for him to be so skeptical.

“He’s always been four steps ahead of me in everything we’ve ever done together. I just— I want to make sure that nobody gets left in the dark this time around.” Kurosaki sighed heavily, deflating practically, hunched shoulders going slack. His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip, drawing it in and biting down on it almost nervously. “Which means there’s something I need to tell you. And something you should probably see.”


	11. These Translucent Truths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay but an old manga panel of Grimmjow came across my Twitter feed the other week and this bastard… this absolute motherfucker… has _DIMPLES_ … and I had to put that in here. I just had to. It’s so unfair that I went back just to check. And, well, Chapter 202.  
> Anyway, I hope you are all doing well. Your love makes my heart feel full to bursting, so thank you. ❤️

**~  
  
**

_“I, too, remember that feeling.  
You are caught  
between all that was  
and all that must be.”_

Haruki Murakami, **Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World**  
  


**~**  
  


Kurosaki was gnawing at his bottom lip with a single-minded devotion as he cast a furtive glance at the stairs again, and Grimmjow knew he was staring because he was waiting for the blood that had to come soon enough. Humans were so miserably fragile that they could hurt even themselves, he knew that. He also knew that while their teeth were relatively dull, they had at least a few sharp ones and Kurosaki had to have nearly chewed through his lower lip by now. A shame, since it would likely stain his white shirt and he’d throw a fit, though it’d blend in with his red jacket at the very least.

“Well, spit it out already, Kurosaki,” he snapped, exasperated by the whole clandestine show the Shinigami was putting on.

Before Grimmjow could put up much of a protest, one of Kurosaki’s hands was fisted in the lapel of his jacket and yanking him forward, manhandling him into the room he’d vacated. “Geez, would you be quiet for once? If I wanted everybody to hear this, I’d have said it earlier.”

It took a moment for Grimmjow’s sensitive eyes to adjust to the change in light as Kurosaki let go, one hand still holding the door to the frame. A small, mostly empty space, with something emitting light in the corner, and bedding still strewn across the floor. This must have been where Kurosaki’s human body had been, he decided. Between the rucked up mess, Kurosaki’s stuffed animal was gawping up at him, the fear oozing out of his seams nearly palpable. Which, considering how the room absolutely _reeked_ of Kurosaki’s reiatsu, layers of it actually that told Grimmjow he probably used this room a lot, was impressive.

“Have you lost what’s left of your mind?” the plush lion squawked as Kurosaki dove to scoop him up, slamming a hand that could have easily wrapped around its entire head over its mouth instead, muffling its voice. Grimmjow frowned, reaching up to brush the back of his hand down his jacket, smoothing out the wrinkles Kurosaki had bunched into it, as he observed the two of them.

“Kon, I swear, I’ll take your pill out,” Kurosaki hissed in a hushed voice, even going so far as to give the lion a little shake.

As far as threats went, that seemed to be a decent one to the plush soul. When Kon nodded against Kurosaki’s palm, he pulled his hand away and freed his mouth. He wriggled in Kurosaki’s grasp until he was released, thumping gracelessly back down to the bedding. Grimmjow watched, faintly amused but mostly exasperated, as Kon struggled to get back onto his stubby, plush legs to look up at the two of them towering over him. He glanced between the both of them a few times, before pointing a felt-claw tipped arm up at Grimmjow, who arched an eyebrow in response.

“Fine, but if you’re gonna eat anybody, eat Ichigo,” he declared, quieter than he’d spoken before, voice wavering slightly.

“Kon!” Kurosaki exclaimed, sounding scandalized, kicking out sharply as if he meant to punt the tiny fucker across the room, and missing as Kon dodged out of the way in a perfectly timed roll.

But Grimmjow just grinned down at the tiny lion, all teeth and swagger, with a little push of reiatsu for flair. The way its stuffed legs trembled as it stared up at him was immensely gratifying. “Oh, I will. You’d barely be a snack. Kurosaki here is practically a twelve-course meal.”

“Nobody is eating anybody,” Kurosaki stated firmly, stepping between Grimmjow and Kon, staring at Grimmjow liked he was daring him to argue. Not even Kurosaki’s challenge was enough to erode his brief cheer brought on by terrifying the plush soul who was currently hugging Kurosaki’s calf and gazing up at them with flat-black, plastic eyes. “Okay? Kon, listen at the door, would you? I don’t need the whole house listening to this.”

**~**

_A twelve-course meal,_ for fuck’s sake. It was one of the worst things anyone had ever said about him, including Grimmjow even apparently calling his bones pretty sometime earlier in the day, and yet he’d made that statement sound like a compliment somehow. Or maybe Ichigo was just that fucked in the head. It certainly didn’t help that Grimmjow had grinned so wide down at Kon and Ichigo was standing so close that he realized for the first time that the bastard had _dimples._ _Fucking dimples._ One, tucked right in the corner of his mouth on the bare side of his face. Grimmjow was watching him through narrowed eyes, bottle-glass blue shining back in the room’s light, but he made no move for Kon or Ichigo, kept his hands tucked in his pockets, shoulders still a little tense from their spat in the hallway. With a short sigh, Ichigo looked down and gave his ankle a shake to jiggle Kon off of him. With a grumpy scrunch of his face, he released his hold and padded over to the door to do as Ichigo asked him. He sat down with a huff, right where the door met the frame, and crossed his tiny arms over his chest.

Hopefully he would actually do what Ichigo asked of him because if anybody should throw that door open, worst of all Yoruichi, it would look questionable at best. Just him and Grimmjow standing like two idiots in the middle of a relatively small room glaring at each other. And, hopefully, Kon would stay quiet. He knew too much, far more than Ichigo wanted anyone else to know, especially a mouthy, sly Arrancar who’d probably made a hobby out of cataloging Ichigo’s weaknesses. Ichigo’s eyes instinctually flitted to every dark corner of the room to check them before he hauled in a steadying, deep breath.

“Stop doing that,” Grimmjow snapped, voice a low growl that thrummed through the room.

Ichigo jumped to attention, gaze flying back to Grimmjow. “Doing what?”

The look Grimmjow gave him, like Ichigo was denser than a brick wall, did nothing to calm the tangled mess of agitated nerves he’d become since their altercation. “Checking the corners. Nothing else is going to sneak into this house after the literal fuckload of wards Tessai and Kisuke put on it this morning.”

 _Shit,_ was he that obvious about it? Nobody had ever called him out on it, not Yoruichi, not Kon, not even his dad. It was a habit he couldn’t kick, spillover from his nightmares where Almighty eyes were always watching him, filling the shadows, looming around every turn. A survival instinct, not that Grimmjow needed to know even a scrap of that information, regardless of whether or not he could understand. Ichigo still hadn’t decided if he thought Grimmjow was up to something or not. He flexed his fingers, feeling put on the spot as Grimmjow regarded him with his usual unnerving intensity.

“What I’m going to show you… don’t— you can’t freak out, okay?” Ichigo pressed, leveling Grimmjow with a look that he hoped said he really meant it. He pictured the flash of Urahara’s grey eyes in the back of his mind, gaze expressing disagreement without even speaking: _No, we’re not telling him, we can’t trust him, now isn’t the time, we’ve got other things we need to focus on without that clouding our work._ Well, fuck that, Ichigo was done playing by Urahara’s rules.

Ichigo closed his eyes for a brief moment to concentrate, to sift through the effluvium of spiritual energy in the shop, to latch onto Grimmjow’s, burning blue and hot and bright like it always was. He breathed out and reached out, snatching Grimmjow’s spirit ribbon and holding it tight, eyes fluttering open. It was fucked up that in a house full of literally ancient people, he had to be the one to act like an adult. Questionable motives and prickly personality aside, Grimmjow had been nothing but compliant with both the rules of Ichigo’s deal with him and any rules Urahara may have lain down. On his periphery, he could see Grimmjow shoulders go rigid, glacier-blue gaze laser focused on Ichigo’s hand.

“What the hell is that?” he demanded, glare darting up to catch Ichigo’s eye before darting back down. His eyes were narrowed to slits, teal estigma darker in the ambient light from the lamp in the corner.

“Everybody wants to play it close to the chest, myself included,” Ichigo started, exhaling sharply out his nose. “This shit isn’t going to work unless we’re all reading the same book, on the same page, at the same pace.”

“What—”

“It’s yours,” Ichigo cut him off, rubbing a circle across the ribbon with his thumb. He half-expected the black line to feel different, for there to be a tactile difference between the two colors, but there wasn’t. “When you first got here and we were down in the bunker, Urahara-san knocked you out and Tessai-san did diagnostic kido on you and we found this stripe in your spirit ribbon.” Ichigo braced himself for the outburst he’d been anticipating since he’d decided that this conversation was going to have to be had. Grimmjow didn’t disappoint.

“You kinky bunch of fuckers,” Grimmjow snapped, eyes blazing to life with somewhat warranted fury. Ichigo couldn’t help but notice that he still kept his voice lowered, though the brief flare of his reiatsu was anything but subdued. “Did you cavity search me too while I was out?”

“What? No—” Ichigo just barely stopped himself from launching into an explanation. Had Urahara really explained nothing to Grimmjow? He’d told Ichigo that the two of them had _talked_ after Ichigo had gone home yesterday. “I know Urahara-san probably told you about the world dividers and why getting your reiatsu disguised quickly was important.”

Grimmjow pursed his lips, jaw flexing on one side as he clenched it, bone teeth grating on the other, before he rolled his eyes. “I’m not allowed to be here, yeah, yeah, he told me.”

“Grimmjow—” Ichigo’s throat swelled for a moment, choked by old emotions, ones he thought he’d made his peace over before blacking out on illegal Shihouin moonshine. He gripped Grimmjow’s spirit ribbon a little tighter as if it was going to steady him. “Everybody thinks you _died_. You— you were there and then you were gone, and nobody could find you, or your body. Nel never stopped searching, but everyone just assumed… Her and Harribel, the people in this house, they’re the only ones that know you’re alive.”

Grimmjow regarded him silently for a moment, entire face pulled down into a cranky frown. “So? Not like I died a war hero or some shit. The hell do I care what a bunch of Shinigami think about me?”

It was like talking to a wall, a wall that Ichigo wanted to bash his head against repeatedly. There was no absolutely no use in telling Grimmjow that actually, yeah, he’d kind of been treated like a war hero. He’d been mourned alongside the other fallen fighters, name memorialized beside them. They’d all sort of grieved him in their own ways, including Urahara, even Yoruichi who’d drunkenly admitted one night several months ago in one of the rare instances that anyone bothered to mention Grimmjow by name, that she still couldn’t come to terms with the fact that she basically owed him her life. Ichigo hadn’t thought much of it at the time since he’d been equally inebriated and unclear on how that battle with the sternritter had unfolded until yesterday. And Ichigo wanted to tell him, he did, considering two very important people in his life were still here because of him. But Grimmjow didn’t seem interested in the hero worship and Ichigo couldn’t blame him for it. It was uncomfortable no matter who was fawning over you.

“Do you know what this is?” Ichigo asked him instead, holding out the spirit ribbon in both hands, tightly so Grimmjow knew he couldn’t just snatch it away.

“Cloth?” Grimmjow ventured with a disinterested tone, but his sharp blue eyes that followed the black line were too fixated for the disinterest to be genuine.

“All souls have a spirit ribbon, Hollows have white ones, but they’re supposed to be _only_ white,” Ichigo said quietly, studying Grimmjow’s face to watch his reaction. It was carefully blank, the same practiced look of indifference that he was so good at. Ichigo liked to think he was decent at reading people, had become a bit of an expert in the last fourteen months, obsessed with scrutinizing everyone and their motives. Grimmjow was _good,_ almost as good as Urahara in disguising what he was feeling. But, unlike Urahara, he didn’t have a precisely tipped hat or a paper fan to hide behind, and his eyes gave him away.

“You said this one’s mine,” he stated quietly, pulling one hand from his pocket to run the tips of his long fingers across the black, feather-light, pressing the ribbon gently against the palms of Ichigo’s hands. “What’s up with the black?”

“We don’t know,” Ichigo admitted, and he couldn’t fault him when Grimmjow frowned down at him, his characteristic snarl building across the bridge of his nose. “Urahara-san said it might have something to do with you going back to Hueco Mundo and what happened to you there.”

His eyes widened slightly, so minutely Ichigo would have missed it if he hadn’t already been staring, before the rehearsed calm was back. “Nothing happened to me there,” Grimmjow commented, tone icy, a warning that Ichigo chose to blatantly ignore.

“That’s not what he told me,” Ichigo shot back and cursed himself when Grimmjow reeled back with a low growl, lip half curled to flash a sharp canine. “And in the spirit of honesty, I know that’s a lie because Urahara-san told me about _her_.”

It was a wildly uncomfortable experience to watch someone like Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, the king of bluster and violence and scathing banter, flinch. But he did, nose wrinkling and eyes narrowing slightly as he winced, but he never once shifted his gaze away from the spirit ribbon in Ichigo’s hands. It was enough of a confirmation for Ichigo that he’d been correct in putting two and two together: that the voice he had heard in his nightmare might be the same sentient thing Grimmjow had told Urahara might have healed him. The same _she_ that Grimmjow had casually mentioned before decking him in the face.

“And I think I’ve been hearing her voice since you stabbed me,” Ichigo murmured and it was his turn to cringe when Grimmjow’s head snapped up to look him in the eye. There was a startling openness in his gaze that Ichigo had never seen before, the pupils of his blue eyes blown wide in the low light of the room, estigma like dark eyeliner someone had smudged. They were standing so close that he could practically count all of Grimmjow’s dark lashes as the intense eyes they framed studied his face like they were looking for a lie. “I’m not gonna push you for information because I don’t think this happened on purpose. I’m telling you this because the black that’s here is unnatural and he’d probably never say it out loud, but I think Urahara-san is worried that whatever did _this_ could be controlling you.”

In an unexpected reaction that Ichigo would never in a million years have guessed he’d give and one he absolutely committed to memory, Grimmjow’s face slackened and went soft, almost fond. And Ichigo was left to stare at him, feeling dumbstruck and enthralled, as Grimmjow’s gaze shifted away and he sighed, shoulders slumping slightly. “I haven’t heard her voice since I left Hueco Mundo,” he muttered quietly, sliding his hands back into his pockets. It was so quiet in the room that Ichigo could hear the jangle of one of Grimmjow’s belt buckles and the howl of a dog somewhere down the block outside.

A tingling thrill shot through Ichigo’s body and he gripped the spirit ribbon still clutched in his hand a little tighter. Out of the corner of his eye, just over Grimmjow’s shoulder, Kon was watching them intently. “Is she the one that healed you?”

“I don’t know, probably,” he replied, tongue darting out to wet his lips, blue bangs tickling his brow. “I think she was the one that showed me Ulquiorra and your Hollow.”

Ichigo sucked in a sharp breath of surprise and looked down at the spirit ribbon again. That was too many pieces coming together for it all to be a coincidence. Which meant that the spirit that had healed Grimmjow was not only sentient, but omnipresent. Enough to know things that only three living people and one dead Espada were supposed to know. Powerful enough to share those memories. Had her healing Grimmjow changed his reiatsu somehow? Maybe that was why it felt different. Maybe that healing had been what changed his spirit ribbon, put the black in it.

“But why?”

“Dunno, never really bothered to ask.” A small smile quirked one corner of his mouth for a moment before pulling back down. Grimmjow lifted his gaze to Ichigo’s clothed shoulder and stared. “When I stabbed you, huh? What’d she say?”

He hadn’t even wanted to tell Urahara about his nightmare, about Grimmjow in a different and very strange sort of release form, basically holding him down as Yhwach attacked him. There was absolutely no way he was about to tell Grimmjow that he _dreamed_ about the bastard either. That was the kind of shit you embarrassingly lorded over someone like emotional blackmail and Ichigo didn’t need that right now. He could tell Grimmjow what she’d said, just like he’d shared with Urahara. In the spirit of honesty or whatever nonsense. Grimmjow had been forthcoming with information it seemed, but he didn’t seem to have much.

“She, uh, told me she could ‘smell my soul rotting in my bones’. That I should come ‘home,’” Ichigo stammered and tried to look unbothered when Grimmjow’s gaze slid from his shoulder to his face again, eyes widening with surprise.

His eyebrows jumped up in disbelief once before he pursed his lips. “Cryptic and unhelpful,” he commented and Ichigo couldn’t help the wry smile that pulled at his mouth. That much they could agree on. Ichigo wondered if that was the way she’d talked to Grimmjow for fourteen months, in riddles that made no sense. Or maybe she only shared memories with him, memories that were not her own, that belonged to people from Grimmjow’s past, old enemies and unsolicited comrades. Needing something to do with his hands, Ichigo unclenched his fingers one by one and let the spirit ribbon he’d trapped slip from his palms and vanish back into the ether.

“Tessai-san said that your reiatsu and power levels felt different. Maybe she did that too.”

Grimmjow’s eyes narrowed, but it seemed to be in curiosity instead of anger. “I don’t feel any different,” he replied, eyes sweeping down his own body as if such changes would physically manifest like that.

Ichigo’s strange nightmare of Grimmjow with flat-blue eyes of feral light, the same light that glowed down the length of the scar Ichigo had given him, of Grimmjow with long white hair instead of blue, chest bare of the usual ivory bone-like plating of his released form and instead marked in black tattoos. It couldn’t be a coincidence, nothing could anymore. It had reminded him of Ulquiorra’s second released form, the way it had looked similar but the reiatsu was so different, so much more potent. There was no way Ichigo dreamed up something that detailed all on his own, but he didn’t know if it had been the influence of Grimmjow’s reiatsu lingering in his shoulder wound or the unnamed entity from Hueco Mundo echoing in his head. Ichigo felt like he had a million questions but didn’t know how to articulate them.

“If we can make it to Hueco Mundo, maybe we can find her,” he mused aloud.

Grimmjow gave him a sour look through his long lashes. “I never saw her, Kurosaki, she was just _there_. I didn’t make any deals with her or anybody else, I’ll tell Kisuke that myself if that’s what he thinks.”

“Then we keep training, keep testing the barriers, see what happens.” Judging by the look on his face, that was the only thing Ichigo had said that Grimmjow seemed to agree with. “We could still try though. Don’t you want answers?” Ichigo pressed gently, studying the sharp cut of Grimmjow’s estigma, the way it drew his eyes into angular, feline sharpness, over and across the remnants of his Hollow mask and its jagged teeth. Grimmjow was all sharp, teeth, and jaw, and eyes, and wit, and sword. It was a wonder he didn’t cut people just by standing near them.

“Yeah,” Grimmjow conceded finally, his usual spark of madness reigniting in his eyes like a pilot light as he looked at Ichigo. “Yeah, okay.”

**~**

Grimmjow couldn’t stop the grin that split his face as Kurosaki smiled up at him, soft and open and casual as if they were the closest of friends. “If you promise not to throw another hissy fit, I’ll kick the shit out of you until you get your barrier right,” he stated, aiming for nonchalance and probably missing the mark entirely with his overexcitement. If today was anything to go by, Kurosaki was going to be nothing but black and blue by the time he figured it out. Hopefully Hueco Mundo could hold on that long.

The look Kurosaki leveled him, all bright eyes against dark circles, a slow display of teeth in a cocky smile, had warmth crackling throughout his body. “Oh, ‘cause you’ve already got it all figured out, huh?”

“That’s right,” Grimmjow countered smugly, thumbing his nose. “I guess just this once, for the sake of Hueco Mundo, I could share my superior skills with a lowly Shinigami like yourself.”

“So humble,” Kurosaki tutted, but he was still smiling, eyes crinkled up in the corners, stupidly orange hair a halo around his head. “How does your head fit through doorways being as big as it is?” 

“I make do,” he retorted, reaching out to slug Kurosaki in his good shoulder. The bastard had the audacity to sway back on his heels just the slightest bit from the contact and laugh, a warm and inviting sound. “Besides, if it breaks, that’s it. We’re fucked. Soul Society would know we were there. Even Aizen would be able to feel you all the way down in the bowels of his little Shinigami prison cell.”

“I know I could use more practice. I already can’t do any Kido at all,” Kurosaki groaned, reaching up to scrub a hand down his face. “It’s one of the few things Yoruichi hasn’t taught me.”

“Yoruichi?” Grimmjow parroted, confusion striking him silent for a moment as he stared at Kurosaki who just blinked owlishly back at him.

“Well, yeah,” he replied matter-of-factly, hand sliding across his tanned cheek to scratch blunt fingernails along the base of his neck. “She’s basically taught me everything I know about being a Shinigami, about fighting as one. She taught me how to use Bankai, she trained me in Shunpo. She’s been my mentor since the beginning.”

And the rush of realization, too much like getting concussed in the ugliest way possible, hit Grimmjow like a tidal wave. He’d fought them both as of today, though Grimmjow was pretty sure that all Yoruichi did was play with him a little. But he realized then, feeling stupid but somehow glorious at the same time, that there had been a reason he’d been able to read some of her movements earlier, how he’d been so struck with Deja Vu watching the way her body pivoted before she launched herself forward, a blur as she lapped him, her laugh a taunt always directly in his ear. He’d been so fuckin’ mad in the moment that no matter what he did, no matter how hard he pushed himself, his Sonido couldn’t keep up with her speed or the almost overly graceful acrobatics of her fighting style. Forms and stances and moves he’d seen before but couldn’t place, but now, _now_. He knew he was staring, and he knew he was a little wide-eyed as he stared at Kurosaki who was staring right back with an almost sheepish expression.

She was Kurosaki, but better, Kurosaki but refined, a blade sharpened to its absolute point. Or maybe Kurosaki was her, but raw, a little less grace, quite a bit more power. Body twisting fluidly as he dodged, infuriating when he read Grimmjow’s movements so quickly, a blur as he managed to parry an attack. But now Grimmjow had the privilege of knowing just where all of that proficiency had come from. Which made Kurosaki either a very quick learner or a dedicated student, maybe even both. In the back of his head, a long time ago, he could remember berating Kurosaki the first time he’d ever come face to face with his Bankai, disappointed that all it seemed to give him was a little extra speed. Their fight in the desert had eased some of those initial letdowns. But now Kurosaki had three extra years of experience seeped in war and carnage and an evolution of his sword and it should have been jarring when what Grimmjow could really only call arousal curled in his gut at the idea of what all that speed and power and experience had evolved into now. He’d got but a glimpse of it earlier and his new realization sent a spiral of heat down into the yawning abyss of his soul.

“Huh, no shit,” he remarked, hoping he didn’t sound as weirdly breathless as he felt as all those new discoveries churned up a fresh hunger in his empty chest. “I’d bet my left arm she’s probably a pain in the ass to have as a teacher.”

“Oh, only the left one?” Kurosaki jested, bouncing his own left shoulder up and down for emphasis. “I mean, Aizen cut it off once and you still managed. How lucky are you feeling?”

Grimmjow grinned wide and easy at the memory of batting Kurosaki around with only one hand. That was the first time Grimmjow had been gifted the sight of that mask of his, with all its teeth and red lines. “Tosen cut my arm off. And that doesn’t matter because your busty girlfriend fixed it.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Kurosaki was quick to correct, eyes darting away, but not to check any dark corners.

“I literally don’t care. Actually—” he paused for a moment as he stared Kurosaki down, giving him a onceover. “Where is your unending swarm of devoted followers? Ya know, tits, glasses, the quiet one, that pint-sized Shinigami, the tattooed one?”

Kurosaki gave him a look that blistered like a close-range cero before crossing his arms over his chest. “They have lives. And, I know that you know their names.”

Grimmjow ignored that jab, taking in the defensive posture the ginger asshole had assumed. It wasn’t hard to connect the dots from there. “You haven’t told them anything, have you?” he remarked, cataloguing the reaction of Kurosaki’s jaw tightening so hard it was a wonder the sound of his teeth grinding wasn’t audible.

“Inoue knows. She healed the mess you made of my shoulder,” Kurosaki was slow to reply, voice and expression growing less open and friendly by the second. He looked over Grimmjow’s shoulder at the door and the plush soul still silently guarding it. In the pause, there was only silence, the house quiet beyond their hushed conversation. “I haven’t spoken to anyone in Soul Society since the end of the war.”

Abandonment then, Grimmjow concluded. So, Kurosaki had been stuck in his shitty human world, cut off from all other Shinigami including his loud friends, left to the company of Kisuke and the other ingrate inhabitants of this weird house. Couldn’t have been anything other than low class Hollows to fight either, the ones that came wandering through in search of a meal. Trapped, discarded, and probably bored out of his mind. It was a wonder Kurosaki could even form complete sentences; Grimmjow would have lost his fucking mind already. It almost made him feel _sorry_ for the asshole.

“Dropped you like a sack of shit, didn’t they?” Kurosaki’s expression darkened immediately into something approaching volatile and Grimmjow let out a sharp sigh before rolling his eyes, an action that went unnoticed while Kurosaki brooded like a thunderhead. “Well, fuck ‘em. They’ll probably come crawling back and beg to be back in your good graces eventually.”

Kurosaki didn’t respond, but Grimmjow was satisfied. Everything was out in the open now. All there was left to do was work out the kinks, train and prepare. Though he’d been slamming liquor back for a good portion of the evening, Grimmjow had no doubt that Kisuke would probably work through the night making more of those odd centering poles so they could all begin charging them as soon as possible.

“Go rest your meatsuit, Kurosaki. You’re no use to me or to Kisuke looking like a walking corpse.” Grimmjow shoved his hands back into his pockets, wrist brushing against the hilt of Pantera as he did so.

“Your concern for my health is very endearing.” Tawny eyes swung back to look at him, a little good humor having seeped back into them, a mocking smile pulling at his lips. “Didn’t know you had such a nice bedside manner.”

“Oh, fuck off,” Grimmjow scoffed, wrestling his own involuntary grin off his face as he gave one last glance at Kurosaki’s dark circles, memorizing the exact shade of bruised blue-black that they were before turning on his heels and striding for the door. He came to a halt in front of the stuffed lion and stared down at it. “Move, short stack.”

It all but tripped over its own plush legs as it gave a soft squeal, darting around his boots to run to Kurosaki. Grimmjow pulled the door open and was greeted with a rush of cooler air.

“Don’t do anything dumb until I get back,” came Kurosaki’s stupid-soft voice from behind him and Grimmjow didn’t hesitate to hold up a middle finger over his shoulder for Kurosaki to see. But the hallway was empty and there was no one there to see the grin he couldn’t wipe away.


	12. Reverential

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Life has been a goddamned roller coaster lately, so I apologize for how delayed this update is. I also apologize if the pacing seems weird, rushed: I've been in a weird head space that's been hard to write from.
> 
> Thank you as always for your amazing, inspiring comments. You guys truly are the greatest. ❤️

**~  
  
**

_“There is a lion in my living room.  
I feed it raw meat so it does not hurt me.  
It is a strange thing to nourish what could kill you  
in the hopes it does not kill you.  
We have lived like this, it and I, for so many years.  
Sometimes it feels like we have always lived like this.  
Sometimes I think I have always been like this.”_

_  
_Clementine von Radics, **“The Lion”**  
  


**~**

Ichigo gathered up the bedding from the floor in a rush, folding it into a shoddy approximation of a neat stack, and scooped up Kon, grabbing him around his midsection and striding for the door. He paused, free hand hovering over the handle and listened for noise on the other side but couldn’t hear anything over the thundering of his own pulse in his ears. He threw it open and nearly tripped down the stairs in a rush to descend them. Nobody downstairs either, no sign of Grimmjow or his reiatsu, good, Ichigo was in no mood or mindset to talk to anyone else tonight after all _that_. He hobbled as he yanked his shoes back on one-handed and cheesed it out of there. He got maybe halfway down the block, the shoten shop just barely out of sight behind him, when Kon opened his stupid mouth.

“Well, that was illuminating,” he said and Ichigo almost seized at the sound of his voice. He’d been so distracted trying to get out of the house without running into anyone else, and Kon had been utterly silent the whole time, willingly being crushed in Ichigo’s hand. Probably all for the drama of it, the little jerk.

“What’re you talking about?” Ichigo demanded, glancing over his shoulder to make sure nobody was following him, or listening to him talk to a stuffed animal. He really didn’t need to be added to the town’s psychiatric watchlist, if they had one. Kon hadn’t been wrong though; it was late if the dark sky reigning above them was anything to go by. The moon hung nearly full, lighting the quiet sidewalks of Karakura in a wash of soft white. Save for the hum of the power lines and the soft chirping of crickets, it was a quiet night just like any other, too late for anyone to be out for a casual stroll. Ichigo was well-accustomed to looking like he was casing houses as he walked home though.

“You and Blue making cow eyes at each other. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Ichigo, we all _know_ already about, well _you know_ , but he’s about as dense as a bank vault door, if you catch my drift.” Kon amicably patted Ichigo’s fingers in what was probably supposed to be a gesture of empathy.

Ichigo did not, in fact, catch his drift at all. “Kon, I’m not screwing around, I will put you in the washing machine on the spin cycle.”

“Okay, okay, okay!” the mod soul squeaked, wriggling a little in Ichigo’s tight grip as they rounded the corner, effectively putting the shop and its inhabitants behind them.

It was all Ichigo could do not to let out a sigh of relief, one that he felt like he’d been holding in since he’d first thrown that guest bedroom door open to reveal Grimmjow waiting in the hallway. His heart still felt like it was putting on some kind of acrobatic performance in his chest. He couldn’t believe he’d yelled at Grimmjow like that, lost his cool, got right up in his face. He couldn’t believe some of the shit Grimmjow had said either, vacillating between pure rage and startling openness.

_It’s cute that you think that decision was entirely consensual._

The look on his face when Ichigo had mentioned the bodiless voice in his head, the way it had gone all soft. Soft around his bottle-glass blue eyes, tension easing out of his forehead and nose that always seemed like they were fixed in a permanent scowl, looking almost _gentle._ That image was seared into his brain now, like a handprint in wet cement. Had Kon heard everything that the both of them had said? He’d only been able to see Ichigo from his spot at the door, didn’t get to see Grimmjow’s face for the most part, so what the hell was he talking about?

“What are you all twisted up about anyway?” Kon asked, voice dropping to a whisper.

“Nothing,” Ichigo insisted petulantly, trying to ignore the way Kon blatantly gave him the stink eye. They continued on in stubborn silence for a few paces before Ichigo exhaled sharply. He continued to ignore Kon’s watchful gaze staring intensely up at him, focused instead on the empty sidewalk before him, on the walk that he felt like he’d made a million times. “Now that I know Grimmjow hasn’t managed to fuck everything up on purpose, I’m at a loss. Urahara and I assumed that he was sent by _whatever_ in Hueco Mundo. But he’s just as clueless as we are and now we’re back at square one.”

“But it’s not square one: you have a plan, and training to do. You don’t trust him,” the plush lion said softly, and it wasn’t a question at all.

A heavy sort of guilt settled in Ichigo’s chest. He didn’t know what else to call it other than guilt. It _felt_ like guilt, but Ichigo didn’t understand why he would feel that way. “I don’t know,” he admitted.

He wanted to trust Grimmjow, but he didn’t say that. Ichigo wanted to believe that Grimmjow was a man of his word, would stick to their promise and remain committed to their cause. But the more he actually spoke to Grimmjow, the more he realized he didn’t know the arrancar _at all._ Swinging a sword at someone, being able to read their movements, it wasn’t the same as actually knowing and understanding them. Of the two of them, Ichigo should know that, and he was kind of ashamed that he hadn’t bothered to make that distinction earlier. Grimmjow was _complex._ Ichigo had known since Grimmjow had used him like a punching bag all those many years ago in the streets of Karakura that he was perceptive. He’d been able to deduce just by looking at Ichigo that using Getsuga Tenshou at the time took a serious toll on him. He was clever, knew all the right words to say to get a rise out of someone, especially Ichigo. He was brilliant, cunning, a manipulative tactician, and while Ichigo _knew_ all of that to some extent, _why_ was it such a surprise to see other facets of him? Grimmjow wasn’t some mindless, battle-driven, bloodthirsty soldier, no one was _that_ one-dimensional, Ichigo knew that, _he knew that._ But—

“Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on him?” Kon mused and Ichigo resolutely did not look down. “Listen, he’s absolutely a psychopath, you can practically smell it on him like cologne. Eau du Murderer. But he’s following your rules and playing house with the Brady Bunch and I think if one of you makes him say that he’s in this to help you one more time, he’s gonna lose it. What more do you want out of him?”

And, _shit,_ Ichigo thought, coming to a full stop in front of the clinic doors, that logic was impossible to argue with. Grimmjow had been nothing but compliant, respectful even of Urahara’s property since skewering Ichigo, offering insight and assistance readily. “You’re right,” Ichigo breathed, something slackening ever-so-slightly in his chest.

“I know I am,” Kon said, sounding far smugger than he honestly deserved to. “I’m glad you realized your wrongness so fast. Now the proper wooing can begin.”

“The proper what-ing?”

Kon, of course, didn’t leave any opportunity for Ichigo to receive a response, popping free of Ichigo’s grasp to land nimbly on the clinic walkup. He reached out with his stubby little arms to push the front door open with considerable force, striding in as if he was the one that footed all the bills. Ichigo, helplessly lost, truly so god damned confused, could only follow after, toeing his shoes off out of habit at the door as he watched Kon waddle into the house.

“You’re home,” Isshin remarked, gazing placidly at Ichigo overtop the newspaper from where he was sat at the kitchen table. “And in one piece. See, I told you he’d be just fine, Kon.”

Kon gasped like he’d been slandered, stopping on the first stair and turning to look at Isshin, one paw raised accusingly. He looked from Ichigo back to Ichigo’s father before seeming to deflate, dropping his arm back to his side and hopping up the stairs with a huff. Ichigo watched him go, until he mounted the top step and disappeared back into Ichigo’s room, kicking the door shut with a resounding slam.

His dad’s turn of phrase gave Ichigo pause and he turned back to look at his old man. “Kon said that you sent him.”

“Of course he did,” Isshin said, folding the newspaper closed neatly atop the table. He gave Ichigo a discerning look from where he remained standing at the stairs. Ichigo was so tired of people looking at him like that: assessing, as if they were trying to decide on the best way to speak to him. “You gonna tell me what’s going on?” But, leave it to his father not to pussy-foot around.

“How much do you wanna know?”

“Enough not to be guilty by association should anybody come snooping around. Enough to protect my children.” Isshin paused, scratching lightly at the scruff along his jaw. “Kon told me a few things. Something about an arch enemy coming back from the dead, Hueco Mundo blowing up.”

“Hueco Mundo didn’t blow up… yet,” Ichigo paused, gave the briefest of considerations to whether or not he should stick Kon in the washing machine anyway, and frowned. “And the jury’s still out on the first one.”

“Kisuke and company involved?” Isshin smiled a little when Ichigo nodded his head. “Well, then everything is in good hands.”

Ichigo couldn’t help scowling at his old man. Isshin’s easy, Laissez-faire approach to serious situations was not a trait that Ichigo had inherited in the slightest. Jokes were one thing, but shrugging your shoulders and leaving problems for someone else to handle was not something Ichigo knew how to do. “Just Urahara-san and everybody at the shop though. Not— not anyone from Soul Society.”

“You sound disappointed,” Isshin observed quietly.

He didn’t move to stand or even relax back into the chair, just watched Ichigo casually. It was the most casual anyone had looked at him in the last few days, if not the last year. Laissez-faire or not, his dad had always had the unique talent of quiet understanding. Ichigo didn’t know much about his old man’s time as a Shinigami Captain, or his life before sacrificing his Shinigami powers for his mom other than the passing, drunkenly half-finished stories that Urahara and Yoruichi would sometimes tell. But there was a well of silent experience in his father that was getting harder to ignore the older Ichigo got.

“Do I?” Ichigo muttered, glancing surreptitiously at the stairs.

“Wanna talk about it?”

Ichigo grimaced: talking wasn’t exactly their thing. Communication between them was reserved to blind jabs as Ichigo sat upright in bed, and Ichigo’s retaliations when he was finally awake enough to move with purpose. “What’s there to talk about? I miss my friends, but this is what’s best for the worlds right now. I’m not so selfish I’d ruin that just to have Rukia kick me in the face.”

“So, they aren’t aware of the situation then?” Isshin pressed and well, that was the million-dollar question.

“I don’t think so. Urahara-san is practically crawling out of his skin to keep them in the dark and I’m not really sure why. I just keep wondering if it’s the right move not to try and contact the Soul Society.” Ichigo rubbed at the juncture between his neck and shoulder, kneading at the knot in the muscle there, wondering if he really should have let Yoruichi drive her knife-like elbows into it. “I know Rukia and Renji would help, but—”

“Think of it this way, Ichigo,” Isshin interrupted with a sage wag of his finger. “You can tell them the situation and ask for their help and ultimately incur the righteous wrath of Seireitei in some form, but you can only ask _once_. You can only reveal that you and Kisuke and Yoruichi have kept important information from them _once._ And you wouldn’t go behind Kisuke’s back to contact your friends either.”

“I don’t even have a way to do that,” Ichigo lamented quietly, thinking of Rukia’s stupid cellphone that used to beep incessantly from inside his closet. They’d allowed him his combat pass and nothing more when they’d sealed the borders of the worlds off and Ichigo had been grateful for just those scraps at the time.

“We both know the way that Soul Society works, the laws and bureaucracy they’re beholden to, even Renji and Rukia. Make sure that if you do ask, it’s the right time.” Isshin gave him a stern look before ruining it and the gravity of their conversation with a theatrical wink.

“Thanks,” Ichigo said slowly, weighing that. “I think.” He hoped it didn’t come out sounding too caustic, he really did mean it. It was a decent point: alerting the Soul Society to a potentially apocalyptic issue long after the fact was something Ichigo doubted they would take lightly. Isshin rose from the table, bumping the chair in with his hip before approaching Ichigo.

“The girls are already in bed, which is where you should be,” he murmured, clapping a hand down on his son’s shoulder and giving it an affectionate squeeze. “Maybe if you can find time in your busy schedule, you can have breakfast with them in the morning. They’ve been worried about you.” Isshin shuffled off down the hallway, giving a silent salute as a goodnight, and leaving Ichigo to stew in the absolute silence of the house.

 _Bad,_ Ichigo thought as he jerked the taps of the shower on a few minutes later. _Bad friend, bad Shinigami, bad brother, bad son._ Could he get anything right anymore? He showered in a rush of distracted self-loathing, so preoccupied that he didn’t even check the shadowed places of his room as he crawled into bed, shoving Kon into the furthermost corner. It took a couple hours of staring mindlessly at the ceiling, but Ichigo finally drifted off to a dreamless, nearly restful sleep, not waking until the smell of something sweet wafted up from downstairs. He roused with a groan, joints stiff like an old man’s, and yanked the bedsheet up over his head for a moment to block out the sun filtering in. He reached up with tentative fingers and prodded his still-healed shoulder, no pain, no ache other than that of exertion. No bruises to abuse anymore, to dig into his pain the way he’d been doing for probably too long now. Healing, everything was healing, even himself, and he didn’t know why that fact left him feeling so _uncertain_. Ichigo pulled the sheet down a little and glanced blearily around his room, listening to the quiet din filtering up the stairs. Quiet voices, the scrape of cutlery against plates: breakfast already. The twins would have to leave for school soon and Ichigo had nearly overslept and missed them.

 _I’ve been at war for a long time, but there’s no reason to keep fighting myself. Better,_ _I can be better. I will be better._

Ichigo kicked the covers off and hurried to dress himself, slipping his phone, wallet, and combat pass into his pockets. He thumped down the stairs, following the toasted smell of something sweet. Karin was seated at the table with her back to him, Yuzu in the kitchen putting her own plate together. His father was nowhere to be seen, but that was pretty typical for an early weekday morning.

“Here, Ichi-nii, I already put your pancakes and fruit in a Tupperware to take with you.” Yuzu held it out to him, not even making eye contact, and Ichigo’s gut clenched. Here he was, he’d _die_ for his sisters, literally throw himself on a sword for them, but there weren’t many swords getting pointed at them anymore. He had to stop neglecting the simple things that mattered. _Healing._

“Cool, can I have a fork, please?” He watched a line crease between Yuzu’s brows, but she reached to pull one from the kitchen drawer regardless and handed it over. “Thanks.”

The loud snap of Ichigo pulling the plastic lid off the container was unmistakable in the quiet room, even more so the scrape of chair legs against the floor as he settled himself at the table across from Karin who was gaping at him, one syrupy, dripping forkful of pancakes halfway to her mouth. He made do without a knife, chopping his own pancakes into bite-sized pieces, studiously ignoring Karin’s dark stare and Yuzu’s silent one at his periphery.

“You guys sign up for any fall clubs yet?” he asked around an oversized bite. Yuzu beamed brighter than the summer sun when she sat down in her usual seat, and even Karin’s tiny smile tucked into one corner of her mouth was hard to ignore. Warmth bloomed in Ichigo’s chest, loosening something knotted there.

It was easy to fall into a routine after that: get up, scarf breakfast down with his family, go to Urahara’s, leave his human body upstairs, and spend the rest of the day in the bunker exhausting himself. Ichigo didn’t allow himself any time to think any more about what Kon had said, about Grimmjow gleaming like he was suspended in a moonbeam, so blue and blinding that it hurt to look at him sometimes. He needed to stay focused, that was what Ichigo kept telling himself. He needed to stay focused on their plan, on preparing to find a way into Hueco Mundo, on making sure his barrier was up to the task. It was an easier cop out than having to sift through the tangled mess of unnamed emotions rattling around his chest now.

Urahara surfaced occasionally, looking haggard and frenzied all at once, usually to bid Ichigo goodbye when he left. He was holed up somewhere, working on the centering poles that their plan hinged on, the ones that would stabilize Hueco Mundo if they could make it there undetected. Yoruichi had all but declared herself master of bunker training again, ruthlessly taking on Ichigo and Grimmjow separately, never at the same time. She was like a streaking comet of lime green and she didn’t hold back in the slightest. It was a strange sort of satisfaction, a burst of pride as Ichigo went toe to toe with his mentor, matching her in several capacities. A feeling that was matched by her wide, proud smile she’d flash unabashedly before knocking him to the dirt. Tessai worked tirelessly to keep up with them, wrapping barriers around them each time they broke. Grimmjow was another matter entirely though.

Ichigo was half-tempted to ask if Grimmjow had taken it easy on him the first day they trained with the barriers because he was _merciless_ now. They were supposed to be pulling the kind of blows that would kill or seriously maim, but Grimmjow seemed to attack him with ferocious abandon, signature smile splitting his face, Hollow bone teeth clacking every time he threw his head back to laugh each time he put a crack in Ichigo’s barrier. But Ichigo’s barrier was getting better, it held longer and under more pressure both outward and inward. It took an enormous burst of reiatsu to shatter it now, but only after it received the beating of a lifetime from Grimmjow and weathered the constant storm of Ichigo’s battle-fluctuating reiryoku. It all reminded him a little of training with Shinji and the other Vizards when they taught him how to use his Hollow mask.

Neither of them had taken things any farther than their initial release: Grimmjow never released into his Resurreccion and Ichigo never entered Bankai, never drew on his Hollow powers. He knew that they were going to have to eventually. They had little knowledge of what they would face in Hueco Mundo once they got there, they needed to be prepared for anything. Which meant that their barriers needed to be tested under _all_ circumstances and conditions. Bankai he was pretty sure he could manage, but he was equally sure that White would shred his barrier like tissue paper.

“C’mon, Kurosaki!” Grimmjow jeered one afternoon from a nominally safe distance, one that either of them could cross in the blink of an eye. He was bleeding from a mostly shallow cut in his left forearm where Ichigo had managed to hit a pressure point in his moonlight-bright barrier, slicing right through to the skin underneath. Ichigo had recoiled, pulling back immediately, having assumed that the barrier was going to stop him first, and that Grimmjow’s Hierro would stop him second. He was otherwise undamaged, but Ichigo would be lying if he didn’t admit that he’d been trying to push Grimmjow more than he had any other day. He wanted to test that wavering edge of his burning reiatsu, the flicker in the flame that was just the slightest bit different, the power that hadn’t been there before. He wanted to know how far Grimmjow could bend before he’d break. So far, he’d been failing spectacularly. “You’re starting to bore me.”

_‘Better. We can be more. So much more. Let’s show him.’_

No, Ichigo thought a desperately, tamping down hard on the wild rush of instincts and reiryoku that his inner Hollow pushed forward without warning. He wasn’t ready, not yet. Grimmjow had to— he had to earn that. Like a trust fall. That was Ichigo in his purest form, a bastardized abomination, clad in the black of a Shinigami with the arcing horn and markings of a Hollow, wielding a zanpakuto capable of firing off ceros and protecting himself with a Quincy’s Blut Vene. Merged like that, wielding both blades and all his mixed-up power, that was who Ichigo was in his soul. Only two people had ever seen that form: a treasured friend he trusted with his life, and a dead, usurping pseudo-god. Funny, how that situation rang so familiar, that red thread of fate that had been tying Ichigo up in knots since the ripe age of fifteen.

“Is that right?” Ichigo taunted instead, changing the grip of his left hand. “Maybe we should kick things up a notch.” His heart thundered like a stampede in his chest, beating out an anticipatory, battle-hungry rhythm. Bankai then, he could do Bankai. It’d be immensely satisfying to watch Grimmjow be the one to hobble his way to the healing hot springs this time.

“Hate to interrupt this sausage fest, but I have actual work for you, Ichigo.” Ichigo turned sharply on his heel, the burst of power he’d been charging up dissipating, to see Yoruichi behind him, three white sticks looking suspiciously like fence posts stacked in her arms.

“Fuck you, woman,” Grimmjow growled, his presence heralded only by a disturbance in the dust as he moved to stand next to Ichigo. His glower was visible even through the shimmering, pearlescent light of his barrier

“Me- _ow_ , kitten. I’ll bat you around for a little bit after you catch your breath, if you like.” Yoruichi followed that comment up with a sultry wink, shifting her stance to better hold the weight in her arms. Her remark only seemed to rankle Grimmjow further.

“I swear, I’m gonna cut that sharp fuckin’ tongue out of your head,” he growled, and Ichigo could see the way his fingers tightened reflexively on the grip of his sword, the other beginning to blacken at the fingertips. Ichigo held an arm out to stop him, like a mother barring a kid as she slammed on the car breaks, and fixed Yoruichi with an unimpressed look. It was still such an uncanny reality not to be able to feel anything from Grimmjow when he was shrouded in his barrier. Ichigo had to look directly at him most times now to get a proper read on him.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” she purred at him, a flash of semi-sharp canines in a predatory smile.

“Can you keep it your pants long enough to tell me what the hell those are?”

“What do they look like?” she quipped with a roll of her hazel eyes. She only had three though, and Ichigo had assumed that Urahara had to be making as many as they could carry with them. But maybe three was all he had ready right then. “You’re gonna need a lot of power to charge these,” Yoruichi commented as Ichigo sheathed his swords, both of them ignoring Grimmjow’s thready snarl of frustration.

“I’m not done with him yet,” Grimmjow griped, taking a bold step forward as if he intended to put himself between Ichigo and Yoruichi.

“You are now,” Ichigo muttered under his breath. He was already worn out, reiatsu decently depleted from Grimmjow’s incessant barrage, body tired from doing this all week for hours and hours at a time. He was going to have to draw from something a little _deeper_ to be of any use _._ “Can’t do that here.”

“I figured,” Yoruichi said with a wild grin, the kind usually reserved for their drunken flash-step races. “Kisuke had a space in mind for you.”

As if summoned, Tessai reached out to pluck at the edges of Ichigo’s barrier, discarding it for him. Ichigo’s reiatsu immediately oozed out like a leaky sieve, uncontained by the extra layer and Ichigo’s own lax nature, considering he’d spent the better part of the week not even bothering to keep it in check with how much he was using. He gave Grimmjow’s casually slouched, grumbling figure a backwards glance before shrugging: Yoruichi would be back to have her fun with him within a minute or two.

He followed after Yoruichi without question, just an extra step added to her few as she led him far, _far_ out from the bunker space he was used to using. Far out to a wide-open stretch that reminded him of the chamber beneath Sōkyoku Hill where she’d taught him how to use Bankai, a cratered-out space, expansive and formidably lined with a broken range of mountains. Ichigo was faintly certain that Urahara had to have detonated some kind of device out here to make this basin-like bowl in his own bunker, but Ichigo absolutely did not need to ask. The less he knew about Urahara’s various and suicidal creations, the safer he’d be. It was large enough, far away enough, and the ragged walls of stone that surrounded it were high enough to keep some of the reiatsu he was going to have to release from escaping. It was perfect.

“You sure I can’t stick around for this?” Yoruichi asked, voice gentle with knowing and Ichigo heaved a heavy sigh, taking a few meandering steps away from her. She knew him so well, and the thought should be disturbing, but he found it to have the opposite effect. Ichigo scanned the horizon he could see, trying to find faults that would make this an improper space for him to use, but could find none.

“I’m sure,” Ichigo remarked, giving her a self-deprecating, crooked smile over his shoulder. “I need to concentrate, it’s not— it’s hard to do. I’m still shit at it.”

Yoruichi just nodded, as understanding as she always was. She squatted down and set the uncharged centering poles on the ground. “Kisuke says they should be simple to charge. Hold one at a time, concentrate on channeling your reiryoku _into_ them. They have a reactive measure on the top of each of them. Green means they’re good to go.”

Ichigo craned his head back, staring up at the fake clouds against the fake blue sky, and sucked in a sharp breath, trying to psych himself up. “When I’ve got a better handle on it, you can see it, and then we can race for real. I’ll finally be able to kick your ass,” Ichigo promised before she could dart away. She grinned back just as crooked, white teeth against warm skin, and then she was gone.

Alone in the silence of the open space, Ichigo gave himself a fleeting moment to appreciate how the air felt cooler at the epicenter of the crater somehow. He drew his longsword again, leaving his other sheathed at his hip, and rolled his shoulders out. They creaked like old door hinges and he winced at a flare of pain along his left ribs where Grimmjow had backhanded him with those gnarly claws of his. “Okay,” he muttered aloud, digging the point of his longsword into the earth and shaking his arms out a little too, just for good measure. “Just like we’ve been talking about. Nice n’easy.”

A twisted laugh keened in the back of his head and Ichigo suppressed his own grin at the delight that leaked into his bloodstream, at the power as potent as lightning that rushed in like a dam opening up to flood a droughted desert. _‘No audience for the lightshow? Shame.’_

“Not today. And we’re not fighting anybody,” he said and gripped his zanpakuto tightly, staring intently down at the carbon-black of his blade. “We gonna do this?” White began to seep out from under his fingers and spread down.

_‘I’ll never pass up an opportunity for some looser reins, King.’_

**~**

Grimmjow didn’t know what they would have expected. Kurosaki and Yoruichi just fucked right off, a lightning-like crack as they took off like they were racing each other. He was barely able to sense them in the next few seconds and he cocked his head to the side, peering out at the blank horizon in the direction they’d gone. Stupid is what it was. It wasn’t like they had told Grimmjow _not_ to follow them. And his barrier was still very much intact unlike Kurosaki’s, smothering his reiatsu signature completely. He could sneak up on the two of them to snoop and make them regret interrupting his fight and leaving him behind like that.

He observed Tessai folding gracefully into a seated position on the ground, eyes closing into a state of meditation. It was easy to see that their training regimen was exhausting the gentle giant, but Grimmjow could hardly feel bad for him: he knew what he was signing up for. But this was his opportunity, before Yoruichi came back, before Tessai opened his eyes again. Grimmjow wasn’t fucking stupid, he knew he’d been pushing Kurosaki all morning, harder even with each passing day, knew that the ginger asshole had to be tired. Their little cryptic exchange about needing space hadn’t been as covert as they probably hoped. His Sonido was silent as he moved across the bunker, following the thrum of Kurosaki’s reiatsu, out, out, out. Fuck, they’d gone far. All for Kurosaki to have his precious space to pull his weight in their plan? Stunk of bullshit to Grimmjow.

He stopped at the pinnacle of a crater, crouching down out of visible sight to spot Kurosaki all the way down at the bottom. He was just standing there like a dumbass, one sword out, muttering to himself too low for Grimmjow to catch what he was saying. Just a blip of black and white and fuckin’ _orange_ in the middle of an endless ocean of flat brown, with Yoruichi nowhere to be seen. Grimmjow flared his reiatsu a little, just to ensure his barrier was working the way it was supposed to. Kurosaki didn’t even turn his head and Grimmjow grinned, taking note of a better hiding spot even further down and moving there soundlessly. He angled himself into a perfect position to observe, hand straying to Pantera’s hilt on instinct. From here, and without warning, he could draw good blood, remind Kurosaki not to be an impolite dick. Might teach him a decent lesson about spatial and situational awareness too.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Yoruichi’s voice came purring right at his ear. Grimmjow, whose senses were predator-honed and wholly unaccustomed to how these awful Shinigami barriers affected them, dampened like a light muffling, nearly seized at the sound. “I won’t rat you out like the sneak that you are _if_ you tell me all about what he does later.”

Grimmjow paused, not a complete failure as a fighter, and released the bottom edge of her cropped, white shirt that he’d caught in his claws when she glanced down at it. “Thought you and I were supposed to fight?” he muttered, casting a glance at Kurosaki who was still yammering away to himself.

“Do I look like a moron?” she deadpanned, artfully arching one purple eyebrow. “I’m not about to get in between you and whatever violent foreplay this is going to devolve into once you see him. I’m curious as all hell and trying to respect Ichigo’s space, but I’m more than willing to take advantage of you since you seem eager to be an idiot.”

Grimmjow could see why she and Kisuke had been friends for so long, same mildly conniving manipulation tactics. “Fine,” he agreed, earning a voracious smile from her.

“Better stay unseen,” she taunted with a breathy laugh, but there was something tight around her eyes that Grimmjow couldn’t analyze in that moment. “He finds you hiding out here and not even Kisuke would be able to stitch you back together.” And she was gone without so much of a whisper.

An empty threat if there ever was one. Kurosaki couldn’t do shit to him, especially not since it would violate his own rules with Grimmjow. He shifted a little from around the outcropping of rock that he was hunkered down behind, darting closer to a somewhat shorter boulder so he could see better. That was as far as he dared to move, though there were sizeable enough spaces to conceal him even further down, closer. Kurosaki could be a moron sometimes, but blue hair moving about his periphery had to be pretty fuckin’ obvious.

Like Kurosaki had finally made up his mind, he stopped talking, and hefted his sword out of the dirt to hold it out in front of him. Grimmjow watched his shoulders tense and his chest swell with a deep breath and then a torrent of power detonated from him. It washed up the walls of the basin like a tsunami, crashing over Grimmjow in delicious waves of golden reiatsu that plucked shivers of delight up and down his spine. He knew this power. This was what Yoruichi was trying to respect, Kurosaki’s stupid mask and blacked out eyes? The way they coddled him was disgusting. But that, _that_ was more power than he’d _ever_ felt from Kurosaki and it absolutely fuckin’ reeked of Hollow. Black reiatsu tinged in crimson seeped across the rocks, permeated the air like a heavy, unbreathable humidity, and settled around Grimmjow like a stranglehold.

 _Oh, you’re gonna have to work for this one,_ he’d said to Grimmjow with a shit-eating grin.

The longsword that cut through the eddy of debris and dust was _white,_ not black. Grimmjow had assumed it could just be a different mask, something that looked less like the one Kurosaki had worn during their last battle in Hueco Mundo and something more like the mask that had annihilated Ulquiorra. _Just a mask_ , that’s all he’d been expecting. Not _this_. Grimmjow gawked from behind his rock through the clearing swirl of dust at Kurosaki’s new form. At his ludicrously orange hair swept back from his forehead, at the stripe of black that bisected his left eye dousing it in black, turning that one brown eye to Hollow gold, black all the way down his jaw and neck and chest, marring his tan skin, at the gleeful, almost disbelieving grin on his face. At the wickedly sharp, white horn that arched out of the side of his head like it had always been there. Hollow. Vasto Lorde, power visibly bleeding out of him like a gaping wound, suffocating in its potency, with a kind of weight to it that Grimmjow hadn't felt since Aizen.

“ _Fuck me,_ ” he breathed.


	13. Hunger Pangs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience with this chapter. It was a bit of a struggle to get this one out with all the crazy shit going on currently, and I know it's on the shorter side. Hopefully it makes up for itself in content. As always, your endlessly lovely comments leave me feeling like I'm walking on air. Thank you for your continued support ❤️

**~  
  
**

_“And besides, what’s another bruise?  
What’s a bruise? What’s a bruise?  
What’s a blue moon bruise  
to do but pull young blood to and fro  
like the tide? What’s a bruise  
but a testament to the sharp art  
of surrendering to time and place?_

_Amber Dawn,_ **from “The Stopped Clock”, My Art is Killing Me and Other Poems**  
  


**~**

Grimmjow stopped on a rooftop across from the house where Kurosaki’s spiritual energy emanated from. It was like the whole building was irradiated with reiatsu signatures. He counted five in total: Kurosaki’s, which he’d know until the day he died, one relatively as strong as Kurosaki, one quite a bit less in strength, and two that were barely flickering flames of which one he recognized as the screaming plushie. A trap was what it looked like. Especially considering the literal levels of wards that enshrouded the entire building, layered one over the other by the masterful hand of someone who knew their shit. Grimmjow prowled the rooftop as he studied what he could only assume was Kurosaki’s home. No way was he getting through all those kido wards unscathed. But he hadn’t stalked Kurosaki all this way, his own Tessai-cast kido barrier still in place, not to give Kurosaki a piece of his fuckin’ mind after _everything he’d seen today._

_Kurosaki planting the centering pole he intended to charge in the ground and taking a few steps back from it. Kurosaki with his windswept hair and his Hollow-pale face, his moonlight-white hands grasping his swords of black and white, his nails blackened and sharp as claws. The black marks that spilled down his cheeks, his neck, his chest, his white horn and his eyes, each of them hauntingly familiar, all of it a tugging in Grimmjow’s gut like someone twisting a knife. Kurosaki drawing a cross with the tip of each of his swords, the blinding reiatsu of crimson-limned black and radiant gold colliding against the centering pole in a flash that whited out Grimmjow’s entire field of vision, left his sensitive ears ringing from the din. An abominable amount of power, washing over him in wave after delicious wave, raising the hair on his arms and sending a tremor through his body. And then Kurosaki had fired another one off, and another, until the very air felt like it melted to static around Grimmjow. Until he was trembling with anticipation, the cavernously empty space in his soul full of ravenous craving. Kurosaki did that for hours without stopping, without taking a single break. A relentless flood of reiryoku and reiatsu that burned like the sun even through his barrier._

He’d wait until morning if that’s what it took to catch Kurosaki unawares. But as he lapped the house, he spotted it. Just a rectangle of space in the side of the building that was free of any kind of barrier, just large enough for a body to squeeze through. And it just so happened to align perfectly with a window. Grimmjow grinned and leapt lithely from one rooftop to the other, landing soundlessly beside the window. He pressed a palm flat to the glass and gave it a gentle shove to see if it would open, testing it, and it slid easily, quietly. What a fuckin’ farce, to have all those wards worthy of fending off a hoard of Menos and have such a blatantly weak point in your defense. What was the point of putting all that energy and work in, only to leave a deliberate opening and basically advertise an invitation to trouble like Grimmjow?

Perching himself nimbly on the ledge of the open window, Grimmjow peered into the dark room, eyes adjusting rapidly to the lack of light. And just beneath him, mere inches below, was his answer: Kurosaki himself, sprawled out on his back in bed, eyes closed and moving rapidly, bare chest hitching up and down with even breaths. With predator stillness, Grimmjow held onto the edge of the window to lean over Kurosaki’s sleeping, human body and observe. The fast flutter of his eyelids, the tight frown of his mouth even in sleep, the breaths he gasped in every few inhales, chin jerking to the side, body twitching as if it was tensing for something, _dreaming._ Though judging from the way his hands clenched in the sheets and unclenched, from the distress in the creased lines of his face, it was hardly a good one. Asleep and human and distracted, his combat pass atop a surface not quite within reach: Grimmjow would never get a better opportunity to take advantage of Kurosaki than this.

Grimmjow lowered himself slowly, sinking his weight onto his knees that he bracketed Kurosaki’s thighs with, receiving only an asleep snuffle in response. He let the brief burn of his claws extending spread through his right hand before hovering it over Kurosaki’s chest, just over his heart, feeling the body heat that bled out from there. The power that roiled just beneath that thin, human flesh, seemingly so contained when mere hours ago, Grimmjow had been bombarded by it. It was difficult, to process the disconnect he had between Kurosaki Ichigo the Shinigami and Kurosaki Ichigo the _human._ He had a hard time looking at Kurosaki and remembering that he was supposed to be human first, that according to Kisuke he had been mostly human his whole shitty life until that sawed-off Shinigami had stumbled across him.

Kurosaki gave a sharp, shuddering gasp in his sleep, hand gripping the sheets tightly right beside Grimmjow’s knee, still unaware of the very real threat hovering over him. Grimmjow bent down a little, flexing his fingers before pressing his hand down, pushing against muscle and bone with a little pressure, just enough to wake Kurosaki. And he did, eyes shooting open, a hand coming up instinctually to grab Grimmjow’s forearm in an iron-grip, body tensing taut as a tightrope beneath him in surprise. Grimmjow curled his fingers just the slightest bit, nestled the tips of his claws into Kurosaki’s tanned skin, not nearly deep enough to draw blood yet. Just a razor-sharp threat not to do anything stupid _or else._

“Grimmjow?” Kurosaki rasped, sleep-muddled voice a mix of disbelief and exasperation, as he blinked heavily a few times before squinting up. “What the— how the hell did you get in here? How the hell did you leave Urahara-san’s?” Kurosaki seemed to then, and only then, notice Grimmjow’s barrier still enshrouding him, answering his own question. He tried to sit up, body jerking between the clamp of Grimmjow’s thighs, but Grimmjow held him down easily.

“Through your unguarded window, obviously,” he crooned, relishing the comically wide gaze Kurosaki was staring up at him with, flitting all over like Grimmjow was an active, waking nightmare. “Just begging for trouble, ain’t ya?”

“You can’t be here; you have to go back. If your barrier breaks—” Kurosaki whispered fiercely, and Grimmjow could feel the surge of reiatsu under his skin, even if Kurosaki wasn’t aware he was doing it. A reminder of why Grimmjow was here, what he’d seen, what Kurosaki had tried to _hide_ from all of them.

“It won’t. Now shut up, because I’ve got some shit to say, you sneaky fucker.” While the rest of the reiatsu he could feel in the house was still undisturbed, not that anyone would feel him with the barrier, but how much noise from their voices was too much?

“Do we have to do this while you’re on top of m—” Kurosaki started, and Grimmjow dug his claws in a little, puncturing the fragile, human skin of Kurosaki’s chest ever so slightly, pinpricks really. His whole body jolted at the five points of sudden pain, jostling Grimmjow from his thighs up to his hips. Grimmjow clamped Kurosaki’s pelvis between his knees tightly, snarling a little at the shift in momentum. “Okay, shit! Put those away.”

Grimmjow didn’t and Kurosaki seemed to quickly make his peace with that, squirming under Grimmjow as if there was a way for him to get comfortable. He froze when he looked at his own fingers, still clutching Grimmjow’s forearm, holding the pearlescent gleam of his still intact barrier that was making him shimmer like a midnight mirage. “H-have you had this on all day?”

He chose not to answer, just watched Kurosaki’s eyes shoot up to his face briefly, calculating in their quickness, putting the pieces together slowly in his sleep-addled brain.

“What were you doing the rest of the afternoon? Did you see—” Kurosaki’s eyes popped open wide again, meeting Grimmjow’s own with a panicked wildness. He dug his claws in a little more, added some extra pressure as Kurosaki tried to sit up again, leveling a dangerous smile down at him. “ _Shit,_ ” Kurosaki swore with the vehemence of someone who’d been found out.

And while Grimmjow was massively enjoying having the upper hand, he hadn’t come here just to push Kurosaki around. “I worked for it, now didn’t I? Just not in the way you wanted me to.”

“And _I’m_ the sneaky one?” Kurosaki lamented, seeming to collapse fully back on his bed, going boneless, squeezing his eyes shut, and reaching up with the hand that wasn’t currently holding onto Grimmjow to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Did Yoruichi see too?”

“No, she did want to hear about it though,” Grimmjow conceded slowly. There, Kurosaki would tear her apart for also being a nosy bitch and Grimmjow could consider it recompense for her trying to manipulate him. “Who else knows?”

Kurosaki was digging the heel of his palm into his left eye, frowning severely, orange hair a bed-disheveled mess, and for a brief, glorious moment, Grimmjow really thought he was going to have to beat the answer out of him. “Inoue does,” he replied, voice cracking with sleepy disuse.

“Tits?” he asked, just because he knew it would piss Kurosaki off. The blistering glare he received came not a heartbeat later, illuminated in a soft beam of moonlight that made Kurosaki’s narrowed eyes look closer to Hollow gold than their usual brown. The heat emanating from him was intoxicating, like a hand rising to pull Grimmjow down slowly, gently, bit by bit, creeping somehow through the barrier still clinging to him.

“ _Inoue_ was there,” Kurosaki said, like that made any fuckin’ sense. Grimmjow just stared unblinkingly down at him, tested his boundaries by wiggling his index finger, claw and all, in Kurosaki’s skin. The flinch of pain that flitted across Kurosaki’s face was brief, as was the irritated look he shot up Grimmjow. “Against Yhwach. That’s the last time I—” Kurosaki shut himself off with a snap of his jaw, chin jerking down, breaking his stare, as if he hadn’t meant to say what he’d nearly did.

Grimmjow frowned down at him, brow wrinkling into a snarl as Kurosaki’s gaze darted to the other side of the room. To a shadowed corner untouched by the moonlight filtering in through the still open window. “Is that what this shit is about?” Grimmjow demanded, nodding his head in the direction the Shinigami was looking.

He’d already done this, in that tiny room at Kisuke’s, looking all around that infinitesimal space as if they’d been surrounded by enemies. What was he looking at? _What the fuck was he looking at?_ What did he keep expecting to see? Kurosaki had always been focused, rarely took those maddening eyes off of Grimmjow in any fight of theirs, the way it was supposed to be. You weren’t supposed to look away from your enemy, not even for a second. A second was all it took to get gutted. Now, Kurosaki was always looking somewhere else, not at Grimmjow, attention straying to a hundred different places all the time. Grimmjow knew few other ways to take that other than as an _insult_. That there was something more threatening than Grimmjow that Kurosaki needed to be paying attention to. Because, if it wasn’t an insult, if Kurosaki really thought Grimmjow wouldn’t disembowel him every time he looked away…

The blaze of righteous wrath in Kurosaki’s eyes felt like getting sucker punched in the gut. “I don’t expect you to understand. You—”

“Fuck you,” Grimmjow said simply, most of the anger in that statement burning in his veins like a cero. Grimmjow wasn’t fucking _stupid,_ and this was all Kurosaki’s fault for describing things like he was supposed to be reading the Shinigami’s mind for the rest of the god damn explanation.

“You weren’t there,” Kurosaki hissed out on an exhale, amber eyes nothing more than black, smoldering pits of rage in the dark of his bedroom. He was deathly still beneath Grimmjow, as if he’d been paralyzed, but his gaze was fixed. Grimmjow didn’t really know what he was reading there in those blown pupils, in the nigh tormented furrow of Kurosaki’s brows, in the way he was still holding Grimmjow’s forearm.

Weren’t where, Grimmjow wanted to bellow. There at the end, in the battle against the Quincy overlord with him? Why, _why_ did Kurosaki think that Grimmjow was supposed to have been there with him? Kurosaki had his whole gaggle of friends and mentors, marching willingly into death alongside him. Grimmjow— he was just supposed to have been _cannon fodder_ —

“Should I have been?” Grimmjow pried slowly, hoping the uncertainty wasn’t plain in his face, in his voice.

Kurosaki squirmed a little at that, abdominal muscles tensing and relaxing, eyes darting to the side briefly as if he couldn’t hold Grimmjow’s gaze as he spoke. “ _I don’t know_ ,” he murmured, but there was a thread of desperation in his muted tone. “You just took off.”

“I was there to fight Quincies, and that’s what I fuckin’ did,” Grimmjow countered in a low voice, upper lip curling back to flash a canine. He withdrew his claws but not his hand from Kurosaki’s chest with a sharp exhalation out his nose when an ache too similar to the one his insides had done when blue started steaming out of his god damn Hollow hole started up again.

That wasn’t really true though, was it? Grimmjow had been there _for Kurosaki._ He’d helped Kisuke fix the Shinigami and their corrupted Bankais, agreed to go to war, agreed to go up against the Quincies and all his own natural instincts to protect Hueco Mundo and to get even with _Kurosaki fuckin’ Ichigo._ He’d had more than enough time to stew in his own blistering rage after his miserable defeat at the hands of the asshole currently pinned beneath him in Hueco Mundo. After said asshole had left him _alive_ instead of killing him like he should have, as any other rightful victor would have. Left Grimmjow to live in the shame of his defeat, a debt that could never really be repaid. And Grimmjow loathed debts, didn’t want to be beholden to anyone but himself. Kurosaki hadn’t played that card, not yet at least, was keeping it close to his chest. But Grimmjow was starting to wonder if he was the only one of the two of them who couldn’t let it go, who saw it _that way._

The nasty reality, the rusty knife in the guts truth of it all, was that Grimmjow had launched himself after that mouthy, death ball Quincy because he was an enemy and he’d been in the way of their objective. Grimmjow had taken one look at the smoldering, devastated remains of the most holy of Shinigami places when they’d entered the Soul Palace, and knew that the options of usefulness were going to be limited. He could fight, he could fight _damn_ well, but all fights were an even draw in Grimmjow’s view. There was an equal chance of victory as there was for defeat. And maybe clearing a path for golden boy Kurosaki Ichigo was the easiest way to square his unpayable debt with the ignorant fucker. Blood was blood, and any blood he bled was just blood he owed. Or at least so he’d thought.

Beneath him, Kurosaki was pressing his lips into a tight line, his too open gaze of something bordering on outright _agony_ shuttering closed quickly, wiping blank. “Yeah, I guess you did,” he said quietly, fingers tightening infinitesimally around Grimmjow’s forearm.

“And ya won. So, you’re welcome,” Grimmjow muttered, trying to work his throat around the strangling sensation he felt there. He was beginning to regret crawling through the window: this wasn’t the conversation he’d come here for.

Kurosaki lay silent and still, gaze unfocused, looking over Grimmjow’s shoulder up at the ceiling. “Did we?” Kurosaki whispered, mostly to himself, and Grimmjow stared down at him in confusion.

Even in the soft light of the moon through the open window, Grimmjow could see the ever-permanent dark circles under his eyes, sleepless bruises of an unquiet mind. There was something there, right there in that look. That vague stare that was somewhere else entirely, even when Grimmjow had him pinned down, had his claws out in a visible threat, had already drawn blood even. Five little puncture wounds, thin rivulets of blood having run halfway across Kurosaki’s chest, into the dip of his collarbones, before beginning to congeal and dry there. _What had happened?_ It was like Kurosaki’s fucking _soul_ was missing. What had happened in that last fight, against the Quincy god, the fight that Kurosaki had just all but insisted Grimmjow should have been there for? All Grimmjow could remember was feeling like he was turning inside out when he looked up after the battle against the death ball Quincy and saw Kurosaki’s orange hair across a sea of Shinigami. He’d looked haggard and haunted then too. Maybe that was why Grimmjow was having such a hard time believing that all this time that supposedly elapsed between then and now had actually happened. Because Kurosaki still looked like he was fresh out of the battle of his life.

_Did we?_

Kurosaki’s chest hitched lightly as he sucked in a slow breath, tongue darting out to wet his lips, blinking once, breaking his own spell, and looking back up at Grimmjow. “Still don’t know what’s going on in Hueco Mundo with that voice, whatever healed you, saved you. What if she’s a _Quincy?_ What if this is all still part of Yhwach’s plan?” The agonized crinkle between his brows was back again.

“She still talking to you?” Grimmjow asked, searching Kurosaki’s face for even the hint of a lie or omission.

“No. Hasn’t since the day after you stabbed me.” In his human body, the same body Grimmjow was holding down, but there wasn’t a mark or a scar to be seen in the shoulder he’d mutilated. He had said that Tits had healed it.

Grimmjow thought for a moment, a conclusion becoming clear. “Maybe you need to stab me then. I dunno, give it back or some shit.”

A wry, half-smile pulled the corner of Kurosaki’s mouth up for a moment and his one illuminated eye glittered a little as he gazed up at Grimmjow. “I’ll gladly stab you.”

“Fuckin’ _good_ ,” Grimmjow said a little snappily, the weird release of tension in his chest making him feel like this was a step in a better direction. “Stop dwelling and overthinking fucking everything. No wonder you look like a walking corpse. _And_ now that I know you’re a lying shitstain, you’re gonna have put a barrier around all _that_ too and make sure it holds.”

“I never lied to you,” Kurosaki stressed with a horrendously open, earnest gaze, wriggling a little under Grimmjow’s hand and weight still keeping him effectively pinned. “Not even once, ever. I don’t know what else to say or do to make you believe that.” Kurosaki’s hand tightened around Grimmjow’s forearm, blunt, human fingers just a dull pressure through both the barrier and his hierro. He didn’t know what to say to that at all.

**~**

Grimmjow was an unwavering presence over him, a blank void eclipsed by the barrier still blanketing him, making him glimmer softly like spent moonlight. And he was all wild hair and shades of blue, cerulean eyes that had widened from their usual narrowed, calculating rage, to something that bordered on wondrous. Hair that was starting to fall from whatever styling he usually kept it in, more of it lying on the back of his neck. His legs were pinning Ichigo’s hips so tightly that Ichigo could have sworn he could feel his knees through the barrier. He was so close that Ichigo could have strained his neck just a little to lift his head completely off his own pillow and headbutted him. All bright angles of one eye, estigma and all, illuminated by the moon, the other cast in shadow from the darkness of Ichigo’s room. Ichigo was far too awake now to confuse him with some glittering, angelic apparition as he had when he’d first opened his eyes.

This was the closest they’d ever been, positions reversed no less, since Ichigo had dripped blood all over Grimmjow’s face after their Fight Club smackdown. And well, Ichigo was definitely bleeding a little again, stupid asshole and those sharp claws, using him like some kind of fleshy pincushion. But none of that even remotely mattered because _he’d seen._ He’d seen what Ichigo had tried to hide from everyone, from Yoruichi, from Grimmjow especially. And Ichigo had been so preoccupied by maintaining his control, by fulfilling his task, and reveling in the fact that he’d even been able to shift, of course he hadn’t noticed Grimmjow lurking about somewhere, undetectable because of his barrier. Now he _knew_ , and Ichigo wasn’t sure that was a good thing at all. For some reason, Grimmjow knowing what he looked like in that form, made him feel strangely _naked_. Exposed, like his entire soul and everything he was, was on display. 

“Yeah, okay,” Grimmjow grunted, moving to sit up a little. Ichigo squeezed his forearm tight, as tight as his human fingers could manage around that shimmering barrier and the armored skin just beneath it.

“I’m serious,” Ichigo insisted, because somehow, in some way, it was important to him that Grimmjow knew that Ichigo had only ever been truthful. That he’d meant every last thing he’d ever said to the arrancar, meant every last promise he’d made.

In a soft hiss of reiryoku, the black that had eaten its way up Grimmjow’s forearm, dissipated, claws disappearing with it. A normal, still pearlescent hand shot up and grabbed a fistful of Ichigo’s hair, _right_ where his horn always grew from when he merged with his Hollow, and jerked his head back. Ichigo huffed at the sharp tingle of pain in his scalp as Grimmjow pushed his head further into his own pillow, bearing Ichigo’s throat to him and the moonlight.

Ichigo held statue-still, heady adrenalin and something else having trickled its way into his bloodstream making his heart thump like a war drum in his chest as Grimmjow leaned in. Ichigo’s hips were still pinned by his legs, but they were chest to chest as Grimmjow lowered his face to his throat. Ichigo couldn’t sense _anything_ through the barrier, not his reiryoku, not Grimmjow’s perpetually cold skin, not the smell of him, something like cold steel and desert creosote, not even his breath against his skin. There was just the ache in his neck from the angle it was being held at and the weight of Grimmjow across his hips, all coiled muscle and predatory silence.

“So am I. You will fight me in that form tomorrow,” he practically purred against Ichigo’s throat, and Ichigo could, if nothing else, _feel_ the way those words rumbled in Grimmjow’s chest.

“I— I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ichigo whispered in reply, mouth feeling dry as he tried to hold in the odd shiver working its way down his spine, like the slow skittering of fingers.

His own nose was practically buried in Grimmjow’s hair, just an eyeful of soft, light blue and the sudden urge to lift his hand that wasn’t still holding onto Grimmjow to that hair and thread his fingers through it was as swift as it was intoxicating. Not that he’d even be able to feel it really – would it be coarse or soft? it _looked_ so soft— with the barrier still concealing Grimmjow. It hit Ichigo then with all the strength of a rip current, that while this was one of the most uncomfortable conversations he’d had since telling his family to stop checking on him when he screamed in the night, everything else was kind of _nice._ The familiar presence, the comfortable weight of someone lying with him, even if that someone was currently manhandling him. The gentle, buzzing sensation of Grimmjow’s barrier brushing his ear sent that shiver he’d been trying to hold in jolting through Ichigo’s nerves, rolling through his body from Grimmjow’s grip in his hair all the way down to his bare toes beneath the sheets.

“I don’t care,” Grimmjow murmured against the shell of his ear, voice pitched so low that Ichigo flexed his feet and ankles in a pitiful attempt to squirm away. “See you tomorrow.”

And he was gone in the next blink, the weight of him straddling Ichigo vanishing. Leaving Ichigo to stare, wide-eyed and wired up at his blank ceiling, one hand still at his side clenching the sheets so tightly, the other held up and empty now. Left Ichigo with blood on his chest and the imprints of knees on the sheets on either side of him. Left him to let out a sigh that shuddered the whole way out of him.


	14. Entropy In Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took me a lot longer to write than I wanted it to, but I also took a wee break in the middle just to avoid some burn out. I hope it is worth the wait!
> 
> Thank you for your patience and continued support! 🖤

**~  
  
  
  
** _“Who has not asked himself at some time or other:  
am I a monster  
or is this  
what it means to be a person?”_

Clarice Lispector, **_A Hora Da Estrela (The Hour of the Star)  
  
_**

**~** ~~~~  
  


Ichigo stood in the mirror the next morning, towel wrapped firmly around his waist, toothbrush hanging from his mouth as he reached up to swipe the steam from his shower away. He tried not to stare at his sleepless circles as he brushed a little aggressively, head foggy with warmth and fatigue. It was as the steam began to naturally clear from the mirror, exposing more and more of his reflection, that he caught sight of them. Five cuts, tiny nicks really, over his heart, against the rail of his collarbone. _Grimmjow_.

Left hand still gripping his toothbrush, unmoving, he reached up with his right and fit his blunt fingers over each one of the marks, all five. Ichigo stared at the marks as he moved his fingers over them, already scabbed over, trying to heal. He pressed into them a little, was rewarded with the dullest of aches. There wasn’t even the whisper of thrumming reiatsu there, just the purr of pressure and weight, too much like the voice in his ear from last night. A flood of heat went down the back of Ichigo’s neck, hot enough that he felt it in the tips of his ears, and he damn near dropped his toothbrush into the sink.

It was fine, everything was fine, he thought hastily as he dressed, making sure to pull on a shirt that covered the marks despite the fact that it was supposed to be a zillion degrees out. It wouldn’t matter; they wouldn’t be visible in his Shinigami form, he just didn’t want to explain them to anyone between now and then. The house was quiet as he thumped down the stairs and into the empty kitchen. Even Kon was nowhere to be seen, probably still snuggled down in one of the twins’ beds because he’d thankfully been absent for last night’s visitor. He wondered if anyone knew that Grimmjow had been here. With the barrier on, not even his father should have been able to sense the intrusion. Had they spoken loud enough for anyone else to hear?

The clock on the wall said it was half past ten in the morning and Ichigo chewed at his bottom lip as he meandered to the door to pull on his shoes. He was hesitant to go to Urahara’s for a multitude of reasons now. Grimmjow intended to _fight him_ , which under different circumstances would be totally fine, they needed to be training after all. But Grimmjow _knew,_ and he wanted to fight _White_ Ichigo, and somehow that sat like a bitter mouthful of bad Shihouin moonshine in the back of this throat. Not only that, but there was no way Yoruichi and Urahara would leave them alone after Yoruichi had all but used Grimmjow as a double agent. He wanted to be casual about it so badly. It was just _Grimmjow._ It was just a fight with Grimmjow. Grimmjow who liked to fight probably as much as he liked breathing, just like Ichigo. Grimmjow who’d been mortally wounded and had come crawling back to life and back to _Ichigo._

No, nope, can’t think like that, he decided with another flush, one hand pressed to the hidden claw marks under his shirt while he locked the door with his other. The heat outside was sweltering and sticky with humidity, and Ichigo almost instantly regretted not just leaving his body at home. Waste of a shower.

The shoten shop was eerily silent as he let himself in through the front. It wasn't unusual for the lot of them to have their own things going on, but never all at the same time. Urahara, Tessai, and Yoruichi he could see maybe having important shit to do, but Jinta and Ururu were usually around, running the shop under Tessai’s passing supervision. Either it was another Hiyori training day or there was some kind of conspiracy going on. Neither option bode well in Ichigo’s opinion.

No one answered as he called out before entering the main house either. The table was empty of anything, cups or paperwork, and the only noise was the world divider in the corner, whirring softly, it’s soft glow lost in the daylight coming in through the windows. The centering poles that he had charged yesterday were nowhere to be seen either. The hatch of the bunker was cracked open slightly and Ichigo cast his senses out. He could feel the faint flicker of Tessai’s sedate reiryoku on the other side of the house, resting more than likely. They’d truly been exhausting the man through the week. A faint blaze of blue was coming up through the opening of the bunker and Ichigo hauled in a deep breath, trying to ground himself, before heading upstairs.

Routine, laying out the bedding, lying down and getting comfortable before ejecting his soul. Ichigo made sure to suppress his reiatsu so as not to disturb Tessai and assured that the bunker was closed properly as he slid down the length of the ladder, hurtling closer to the speck of blue not too far away from the base. Grimmjow was sitting cross-legged on the ground, hands resting aimlessly in his lap, eyes closed. There was never a breeze down in the bunker, and so he sat perfectly statue still, the calmest Ichigo had ever seen him until he seemed to pick up on Ichigo’s presence.

“Where is everybody?” Ichigo asked as Grimmjow craned his neck back to look up at him. No shimmering barrier today, he noted. This fight was strictly for the hell of it.

“You’re late, Kurosaki,” Grimmjow remarked with a sneering curl of his lip as if they’d even set a time, and Ichigo cast him an exasperated look. “Didn’t bother to ask.”

“You are the politest house guest,” Ichigo commented cheekily as Grimmjow climbed to his feet, reaching under his knee to grab something as he rose with an empowering, catlike grace.

“Fuck you, I’m practically a prisoner.”

“Says last night’s escapee,” he muttered and tried to ignore how Grimmjow’s eyes were the same color as the bunker sky and that even in the bright sunlight, his pupils were practically the size of dimes. Be cool, just be cool about it. The marks aren’t on this body, Grimmjow was just his average level of distracting today without his barrier, they were just going to fight. _Everything was fine._

“Told them I was keeping you all to myself today,” Grimmjow said, the shit-eating grin on his face sending a complicated thrill shooting through Ichigo’s chest and down into his limbs.

“Oh yeah, and how did that go over?”

Grimmjow’s scowl alone was more than enough of an answer. “I think Yoruichi is still laughing for whatever fuckin’ reason.”

“Geez, I wonder why,” Ichigo muttered around a fake cough to disguise his chuckle.

Grimmjow ignored him and held out the folded piece of paper he’d had tucked under his knee. “Gave me a map and everything. Told me not to blow the roof off of his bunker.”

Ichigo accepted the map with a perfunctory nod, making sure not to touch Grimmjow’s fingers, the same ones that had been clawed and pricking his human skin mere hours ago. “The insurance is probably astronomical.”

“I don’t care about your boring human shit. Let’s go.”

“Why’d you give me the map then? You could have led the way just fine if you’re in such a rush.” Just to be an asshole on purpose, Ichigo unfolded the paper at a snail’s pace, trying not to grin under the irritated blue gaze tracking his every move.

“Didn’t look at it,” Grimmjow admitted, looking like he was regretting it now. “Yoruichi said she left a message for you. Something about wise, virginal advice.”

“She wouldn’t know virgin if it was the actual Mary or olive oil,” Ichigo muttered, rolling his eyes as he unfolded the map which was absolutely drawn in crayon. And scribbled in the corner was a doodle that would have rivaled Rukia’s for shittiest drawing of the three worlds of what was probably supposed to be a black cat holding up a paw with a speech bubble above it’s head that read: _work up to a fist._ Beneath it, in Urahara’s very neat hand, read another message: _Don’t come back until you know what the black stripe is._

Hastily, Ichigo put his thumb over the dumb cartoon’s comment and Urahara’s note as Grimmjow looked over his shoulder at the map, noting the spot Urahara had designated for them with a small star.

“Race you?” Ichigo asked, grinning like a moron, the way he usually would at Yoruichi. He balled the map up in his fist and started to walk, trying to see if Grimmjow would actually follow.

“I’m not falling for that stupid look,” Grimmjow snarked, already in step beside him, not even blinking when Ichigo flash-stepped to his other side just to be a little shit.

“Who wouldn’t fall for this face?” Ichigo said cheekily, waggling his eyebrows for emphasis.

“Anybody with balanc— Ow, fuck!” Grimmjow swore as Ichigo stuck his foot out and tripped the asshole. Too graceful and coordinated to actually eat shit, Grimmjow merely stumbled, but the look he swung Ichigo as he righted himself promised pain. “I’m gonna smear your nose off all the way down to the empty socket of your skull, you miserable—”

Ichigo took off with a crack of laughter. It felt good, to be able to laugh like that, to start the day on what felt like a good note, considering the order he’d essentially been left. He wondered briefly as he noted Grimmjow streaking past him, ever the hyper-competitive jerk, if he should say something. If he should show Urahara’s note to Grimmjow, let him know their intentions. Maybe Grimmjow would be willing to try. He _had_ agreed that he wanted answers about everything, just as much as everyone else seemed to. But if they were trying too hard it might not work and Ichigo wasn’t about to haul ass out to the edge of the bunker and merge with White every day just to get Grimmjow to crack. If there was even anything to crack.

It was nothingness for miles, all the way to the line of the fake horizon. Not a mountain or a boulder or even a stray rock. They were going to absolutely ruin the landscape around them, but if Urahara had sent them _this_ far out, Ichigo doubted he was going to mind.

He hefted his longsword from his back and reached to his waist for his short sword, unsheathing both. Grimmjow, who he’d been fighting on and off for the better part of a week, who’d looked giddier than all shit every time Ichigo so much as drew his swords, currently looked like every single one of his human Christmases and birthdays were happening at once. Right, because he thought he knew what was about to happen. Despite the fact that over the last week, Ichigo hadn’t even once entered Bankai and Grimmjow hadn’t once gone into his released state.

“Stop smiling like that, it’s freaking me out,” Ichigo said, shrugging a little to readjust his unweighted shoulder guards.

“Bite me,” Grimmjow replied cheerfully, drawing his own sword and setting his hand to the flat of the blade.

“Kinky.”

Grimmjow’s answering grin was wide and feral with excitement. “Nobody to stop us this time, Kurosaki.” Without further preamble, Grimmjow swept his hand down the length of his blade and Ichigo squinted against the eruption of reiatsu and the dust it kicked up.

Grimmjow’s reiatsu had always had a strange effect on Ichigo. He’d told Kon as much one night while lying in bed after stumbling home post one too many drinks at Urahara’s. It felt like… the way good music gave people goosebumps. The feeling of hair standing up on the back of one’s neck. It felt like standing alone in the dark and somehow _knowing_ you weren’t alone. Grimmjow’s reiatsu was like a presence that rolled over him, flattened him to the ground, and held him there. Almost the same way he’d done so just last night. A threatening cage and a comforting cocoon all at once.

But the thrill of seeing the plated bone limbs and the whip of long blue hair as the dust cleared was like all of those sensations compounding at once. It had been so long, literal _years,_ since their fight in Hueco Mundo, and that was the last time Ichigo had seen this form. Under his own skin, White was practically singing a holy chorus of angels, absolutely crooning down in the depths of Ichigo’s soul at the fight that was about to go down. It was hard to deny the thread of excitement weaving it’s way through his guts, even without White’s influence, totally untempered by the Old Man who seemed to be opting out for his own sanity.

Glancing down as he flexed his now clawed hands, Grimmjow jutted his chin in Ichigo’s direction, brow crinkling with his signature snarl. “C’mon, let’s go.”

Ichigo rolled his neck, letting the vertebrae pop as he settled the tip of his longsword in the earth. He pulled in a lung-achingly deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling like a parent trying to catch hold of an unruly child as he reached down into his soul and drew on White. Ichigo was still absolutely shit at this, no matter how willing White was to cooperate. He tried to ignore the brief flash of geometrics spiderwebbing across the back of his hands as he concentrated on the best way he and White had worked on for this: envisioning their connection as a channel full of dams that Ichigo needed to lift one by one.

“What, can’t get it up, Kurosaki?”

“Do you listen to what comes out of your mouth… like _at all_?” Ichigo huffed, opening his eyes, but Grimmjow just grinned at him, stupid dimple tucked in his cheek. “This might shock you, but I’ve only assumed this form a few times.” He adjusted his grip on his longsword and rolled his shoulders out for good measure.

“Don’t be a bitch, just because you’re afraid you’re gonna crush people with your spiritual pressure.” Grimmjow snarled, growing impatient at the hold up. “I ain’t gonna break that easily.”

Ichigo balked, his concentration completely shattered, which was the exact opposite of what he needed right then. He’d never even dwelled on the weight of his spiritual pressure in this form considering he’d only been able to successfully merge a whopping five or six times. It had to be why Urahara and Yoruichi had sent both of them out to the boonies of the bunker for this fight. Maybe fighting Grimmjow all out in this form might trigger whatever that black stripe in his spirit ribbon represented.

“I intend to ruin you regardless, but I’ll be twice as mean if you don’t get on with it. You want me to turn away or somethin’? Transformation shame?” Grimmjow jested, whirling a clawed finger around in a circle just to be an asshole.

It took an impressive amount of restraint not to just attack the bastard right then, merging and Grimmjow’s fight demands be damned. “Ohmygod, _shut the hell up._ ”

That was _it,_ Ichigo was going to brutalize Grimmjow to a pulp. Firstly, for snooping yesterday, secondly for breaking their ground rules and leaving the shoten shop to come climbing in through his bedroom like some kind of teenage delinquent, and thirdly for being a mouthy dick. That conviction fueled the trickle of heat in his veins like a fever, washing over him fast as he pulled White all the way forward. He tried to suppress the outward blast of reiatsu that always resulted from merging, and managed to do a halfway decent job.

Grimmjow was the farthest thing from subtle, eyes trailing up and down Ichigo’s entire body at a languid pace. It was _obscene,_ the amount of time his eyes spent roaming over Ichigo’s whitened skin, tracking the trail of black markings from his swept back hairline, down his neck and chest. And Ichigo let him, feeling a little more than obliging considering the payback he was about to dish out. He’d let the asshole set the pace, he decided, dance around him a little, test his speed that had outpaced Yoruichi when he’d first arrived here.

With a hoot of delight, Grimmjow was a blur of white, there and gone the next second until he was nearly flat in the sand before Ichigo, stupidly long leg swiping out at light speed to knock Ichigo off his feet. An involuntary, wild grin split Ichigo’s face as he dodged with ease, swiping out with his longsword though Grimmjow was already moving again.

He was absolutely faster than Ichigo remembered, moving fast enough a few times that there were almost two of him. It reminded him of Yoruichi’s _Utsusemi_ she’d often use against him, but that move was a result of Shunpo mastery, so how Grimmjow was achieving it was beyond Ichigo’s comprehension. Maybe there was a Sonido equivalent. Stronger ceros too, he noted, spearing his longsword down long enough to reach out and take the brunt of a blinding red one to the palm of his hand, crushing it to dissipating reiryoku between clenched finger. Ichigo relished the widened look of surprise in Grimmjow’s eyes as he snatched up his sword again and swung at those wide blues.

Grimmjow was, for the most part, managing to keep pace with Ichigo, who worked to remain just out of his reach. Trying to be frustrating with his evasiveness, he knew that his lack of actual fighting was bound to draw a reaction from Grimmjow. He got one, punctuated by a ripping snarl and all five claws of Grimmjow’s right hand igniting, tipped in concentrated reishi, Desgarrón blue, slashing the left sleeve of Ichigo’s shihakusho to ribbons and managing to cleave through the skin beneath a little. Another new thing, but nothing a few years’ worth of training couldn’t achieve. He held those blue claws for what seemed like hours, pushing Ichigo to move even faster to dodge in time. And every minute that ticked by that he didn’t draw blood or inflict injury, was another minute that the battle-joy seemed to flee from Grimmjow’s bright eyes.

“You better stop holding back on me, Kurosaki,” he yelled, the controlled Desgarrón finally dispersing from his fingers. With a sun that never moved, it was impossible to track the passage of time down in the bunker, but if the blistering look on Grimmjow’s face was anything to judge by, hours must have passed already.

He wasn’t strictly wrong, Ichigo thought, as he watched a bead of sweat run from Grimmjow’s hair line and down his mask-bare cheek. Ichigo wasn’t even out of breath, hadn’t even broken a sweat yet. But Grimmjow had that look in his glittering eyes, the dangerous one that had meant trouble for Ichigo every single time in the past.

“What are you so afraid of, huh, Kurosaki?” Grimmjow goaded as he moved, circling him like an animal belly down in the tall grass. _Stalking him._

“I’m not afraid,” Ichigo snapped back immediately, turning with Grimmjow to try and keep him within his line of sight.

“I told you, I’m gonna ruin you. And I’m startin’ to care less and less about how I’m gonna make that happen,” he said with a flat voice, and as far as threats went, he was really selling it.

There was a careful blankness in Grimmjow’s gaze that Ichigo didn’t like _at all._ Something blank and cold and calculating. Ichigo’s plan seemed to have worked somewhat; Grimmjow was very clearly pissed off. But he’d been aiming for a frothing at the mouth angry and not whatever this was. A narrowed gaze of blue rotating around him, like he was being analyzed from every angle. There was nowhere to hide, so open and exposed as they were out here, Ichigo could only launch himself at Grimmjow, firing off a weak Getsuga Tenshou. It was only added insult to injury when Grimmjow all but backhanded it aside and his expression darkened even further, into something bordering on pure ire.

“Only a few times, huh?” Grimmjow seemed to muse aloud and Ichigo froze like a deer in fast-oncoming headlights. A huge mistake to react at all: that was what Grimmjow had been waiting for. Though he didn’t greet Ichigo’s startled look with a malicious grin as Ichigo expected him to. Just more of the same coldness, devoid of excitement, of anger, of anything remotely friendly. Grimmjow’s reiatsu was crackling around him like static, the sign of an oncoming storm.

“You think I don’t know all the shit you’ve done? You think I don’t notice the way you search shadows like you expect something to be waiting there for you?”

A dose of ice-water cold fear trickled through Ichigo’s veins. “I—”

This was different, a different angle for Grimmjow. They’d been fighting almost non-stop for a week now and never once, not even in the past, had he ever resorted to anything even remotely psychological. This wasn’t the first time Grimmjow had mentioned noticing Ichigo’s bad habit. He’d blatantly called him out on it the other night in the guest bedroom, lacking his usual tact. But right now, Grimmjow was unreadable. No smile, smirk, or snarl, no threats or taunts that he was stronger. Grimmjow may as well have had a full Hollow mask on, wielding the ugliest of truths like a blade.

“You think Kisuke hasn’t told me things he probably should have fuckin’ kept to himself. How they made you a martyr for their war and then forced you to live like a pariah.”

Ichigo moved blindly, pure instinct, a Hollow roar of rage in his head like the crashing of a wave reducing everything to white noise. He stepped right into Grimmjow’s space, not a whisper of sound or reiatsu to signal his movement, and Grimmjow’s eyes flew open wide at his speed. “Stop talking,” Ichigo commanded and fired a full power Getsuga Tenshou at him point blank.

Grimmjow was lucky he was fast as well. Not nearly as fast as Ichigo in his merged form, but fast enough to dodge the worst of his attack. When he reappeared a couple paces to Ichigo’s left, there was a cut on his cheek that was weeping blood and his whole right arm looked like it was covered in soot. But the steel from Grimmjow’s blade, the parts that hadn’t wrapped around his body in his signature armor, was in his eyes that were regarding Ichigo almost clinically. Grimmjow was trying to rile him up, _he knew that_ , and he was still rising to the bait.

“You think I don’t know that you _willingly_ gave up half of your stupid, shitty, soul just to stop that fucker from reducing your world to ash?”

Ichigo felt like a shaken can of soda, veins fizzing with fury, blood pressure climbing under the bottled strain of having all of his choices, some of them the hardest ones he’d ever had to make, thrown in his face. By someone who hadn’t been there, no less. Through the descending haze of indignation, Ichigo remembered what Grimmjow had said to him in the hall outside the guest bedroom of the shop. _It’s cute that you think that decision was entirely consensual._

“I’d stop while you’re ahead,” Ichigo warned, the tip of his long sword beginning to crackle with black light. Grimmjow eyes darted down to the blade and back up to Ichigo’s face, and the absolute ghost of a smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. More of a bad omen than a broken mirror. Grimmjow reached up to swipe the blood from his cheek with the back of his hand before stalking forward. Blatant, bold, a clear challenge though Ichigo had damn near just blown his arm off on an angry whim. He was supposed to be working Grimmjow over, not the other god damn way around, he thought as he gnashed his teeth together. God, what had Urahara been telling him? _Why,_ why had Urahara been telling Grimmjow these things? There was no other way he could have known…

“You think I don’t know that you think you did good, that you did what they asked of you, and that that should be enough, _only it isn’t._ It never was, it won’t ever be.” Ichigo was gripping the hilts of both his swords so hard it _hurt._ His head was pounding, felt heavy, and he didn’t know if it was under the added weight of his horn or the bullshit Grimmjow was spewing that he was _listening to._ The flashing light at the whitened tip of Zangetsu was growing steadily but that didn’t stop Grimmjow from pressing on, both physically and verbally. “That your soul is blacker than the one I don’t have anymore, your hands redder than mine. They’d have let you _die_ for them and _you would have._ And they call themselves your _ally_ , your _friend._ ”

It felt like getting struck with a bolt of lightning right in the chest. The kind of pain that was so hot it almost felt cold, spearing through him. Ichigo staggered back as if he’d been physically hit, eyes burning from not having blinked, unwilling to look away for even a second. The black lightning crackling from the tip of his longsword was sparking against the ground now, more then enough energy to crater the space around them for miles. This wasn’t psychological warfare anymore, this wasn’t just Grimmjow trying to goad him into swinging his swords all out. This was—

“You wanna know why I won’t fucking call myself your _ally,_ why I’m still your _enemy_? Because I don’t wanna be in the same category as _them._ ”

 _You aren’t_ , Ichigo wanted to say. _You couldn’t be. You’re something different, a category all your own._

But he didn’t.

Instead he bit down on his bottom lip hard enough to break skin without even giving it a second thought and let the blood well out. It dribbled down his chin as he swung his longsword up to the building flash of burgundy light at the tip of his horn. In a horrible swirl of crimson-limned black and crackling light, Ichigo swung down. Everything whited out around the two of them and the initial blast left nothing but a sharp ringing in Ichigo’s ears, and the sound of everything following, the impact and the aftermath, was lost on him.

They had in fact managed to create a crater, a meteor-sized gouge in the earth looking too much like where Ichigo had been yesterday. With a swipe of his short sword, Ichigo cleared the dust to reveal Grimmjow nigh on the other side of their destroyed battleground. Ichigo took a step forward, landing a scant yard away, and appraised his own handiwork with the rage still pounding in his chest in time with his own pulse, loud as a war drum.

Grimmjow was bleeding profusely, red pouring down the white of his released form’s armor, the dry earth greedily soaking it up as it splattered across the ground. His chin was tucked to his chest, the tendrils of blood-soaked blue hair hanging over his forehead hiding his eyes, shoulders heaving sharply as he struggled to gain his breath. The plating that usually covered his left shoulder was entirely gone, shattered from the juncture of his neck to midway down his upper arm, the skin beneath it shredded down to the bone in places. But the rest of his left arm, from just below the hinge of his elbow, was _gone._ Shreds of eviscerated skin, muscle, and tendon were hanging from the half stump that was now Grimmjow’s arm. Like an upside-down geyser, blood was spurting across the ground, splattering across his pawed feet and legs.

Every last ounce of Ichigo’s anger fled him at the sight. He’d— Ichigo had _blown his arm off,_ bone and all.

There was a faint blue crackling around the black claws of Grimmjow’s right hand, the remnants of his own Gran Rey Cero. It reminded Ichigo of another time, when he could only maintain his mask for a matter of seconds, when Grimmjow had been missing a whole arm, when Shinji had fired a Cero at him and Grimmjow had lessened the blow of it with his own, just like he must have done now.

His Hollow hole was letting off the same blue vapor from the previous week, curling out in a smoke-like plume. Only difference this time was it was _glowing_ , the entire border of it limned in light as blue as Grimmjow’s reiryoku, and it was spreading. Moving slowly up the scar on his chest and spiderwebbing out, it was following the plated lines of his released form. Ichigo couldn’t see his eyes, could barely see his face, only the crown of bone and the sharp line of his nose.

Ichigo took a hesitant step forward, feeling cold and numb and horrified. In the back of his mind, White had gone very quiet. Whatever was happening to Grimmjow now was not the same as last week, something was different. Grimmjow was still panting, shoulders hunched way up like holding himself rigid like that was shunting the pain. The closer he crept, the better Ichigo could see the true damage that he’d done. A network of hairline fractures ran every which way up Grimmjow’s left leg, from his ankle to his hip. Whole chips were missing across his abdomen and side, like they’d simply flaked off. The entire left side of his body looked like it had taken the brunt of Ichigo’s attack, but his arm was by far the worst of it.

“Grimmjow—” he started to say, quietly, as if he was approaching a startled animal. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—” To amputate you, to disfigure you, to completely lose all semblance of my mind and go berserk.

“No way—” he was rasping out under his breath, in between gasping breaths. The fingers of his right hand were spasming, clenching and unclenching without purpose. The sound of blood splotching across the dirt was making Ichigo’s stomach clench. Blue hair was slicked to his temples with sweat and blood and he looked ghastly, skin all washed out and paler than usual.

“We need to get you to Urahara-san,” Ichigo started to say, and moved to sheath both his swords, knowing he was likely going to have to carry Grimmjow, or at the very least put his last good arm around his shoulders to support the Arrancar’s weight.

“Not— not after all this time.” He was already straining to catch Grimmjow’s muttered words and it wasn’t helping that there was a dissonant hum layered over it that was growing louder. As if Grimmjow was purring in the back of his throat, even as his shoulders hitched up sharply. “No fucking way… I would lose to you.”

Ichigo put a hand on Grimmjow’s intact shoulder, feather-light, surprised he’d been able to get this close without getting maimed. “You didn’t. We can fight again, but I— _your arm_ — we have to—”

But the scream Grimmjow let out, a skin-crawling bellow, all twisted up and layered in discordant notes of something _very_ Hollow, was one of unrestrained rage and utter agony. The sound made every last hair on Ichigo’s body stand on end, would have made his toes curl if he’d been barefoot. He staggered back as something black came burbling out of the stump of Grimmjow’s arm, as his reiatsu signature dipped terrifyingly low before ratcheting up until it was the only thing that all five of Ichigo’s senses could register.

The blast of light that followed was so blue Ichigo swore he’d have it seared on his retinas until the day he died. A hurricane of radiant turquoise, spinning violently, spreading, growing so fast that it took a flash step to clear out of its way in time. He held his blades up and crossed before him to block his face from the worst of the rock fragments getting kicked up. The air felt like a wash of static, the atmosphere charged with a heavy, suffocating reiatsu.

The first thing Ichigo caught sight of through the clearing miasma of dust and debris was a flag of white hair whipping in the gale, the ends dark like they’d been dragged through black blood. The glow was next, sluicing through the haze with it’s intensity, it carved a jagged line down a now bare torso, following the path of the scar Ichigo had given Grimmjow all those years ago. A tail lashed out next, followed by another, black not white, and studded in wickedly sharp looking blades of blue light.

Like something out of a dream, one that Ichigo had already dreamt: gone was the bone plated armor he was familiar with seeing and all that was left was patterned white fur and sharp black markings on pale skin. Black claws longer than they’d ever been, sharp as needles, and the now black diadem of bone across a proud forehead was glowing like everything else, tendrils of black hair falling into eyes that were a flat, feral blue. His lips parted and all Ichigo saw was the flash of literal _fangs_ as Grimmjow let out a throaty snarl, a direct threat.

“Grimm—” His name was barely out of Ichigo’s mouth before those wicked claws were sinking into the juncture of his neck and right shoulder, slicing through him like a hot knife through butter.

Ripping and tearing and the hot rush of blood as he jerked back on instinct, a second far too late, flesh and muscle shredding like tissue paper as he took a flash step back. But Grimmjow was all but holding on, and though the Shunpo put space between them, his thumb had been hooked _under_ Ichigo’s collarbone. Moving away from him at that speed snapped it like a twig.

“Shit,” Ichigo hissed, knees buckling under the flood of burning pain. One kneecap hit the dirt, the other folding against his chest as he doubled over. It was a firework finale of agony in his shoulder and chest, lights dancing through his vision, spotty and tremulous. Hot blood was pouring down his chest and he was afraid to look down to see the damage. It _felt_ bad. He held his swords still, but his grip on the right, on his long sword, was with loose, blood-wet fingers.

Chest heaving, head suddenly feeling twice as heavy, Ichigo glanced up through sweat-soaked lashes to see Grimmjow uncurl is unsettlingly long, black claws one by one. Ichigo’s blood shone under the bunker sunlight like rubies on Grimmjow’s fingers, running down his blackened elbow to drip to the dry earth.

He looked exactly like Ichigo’s strange dream, the one where he ran after Yhwach the same way he always did, only to be greeted by Grimmjow. Less a dream now and more a prophecy. He _knew_ , he knew that line of black in Grimmjow’s spirit ribbon had to be _something._ He just hadn’t expected _this,_ he doubted Urahara had either _._ A second form, just like Ulquiorra’s. Horrible and awe inspiring.

“I should tear _your_ fuckin’ arm off, you motherfucker.” And that was definitely Grimmjow’s voice, coming through clear and enraged as ever. But it wasn’t the only one.

The rush of something white-hot blitzed it’s way along Ichigo’s nerves, searing pain he gritted his teeth against as he threw his head back, tendons in his neck straining and pulling taut as he fought the almost familiar rush.

“ _Foolish, boy.”_

Ichigo gasped in a shuddering, shallow breath, head coming back down to stare at Grimmjow who was watching him with a strange mixture of animal rage and concern. Both looked out of place under the now glowing crown of bone of his new released form. A pawed foot took a hesitant step closer to Ichigo, who couldn’t have moved even if he’d wanted to. He was rooted to the spot, magnetized to the ground, staring without really seeing as another bolt zinged through him, wracking his body with a painful tremor. The voice was so much louder than his dream, than the first time. Like whoever was speaking was doing so directly into his ear.

“Kurosaki?” Grimmjow’s voice was a warble, hollow-distorted, but still Grimmjow beneath the noise, loud and clear.

“ _You’ve never been able to tell your enemies apart from your friends. You would trust a liar, a killer, every time. Even as he clawed out your throat.”_

“Kurosaki.” Grimmjow repeated, not a question this time, warped voice pitching higher as though Ichigo couldn’t hear him, a thread of unease in it.

_“Free yourself.”_

“How?” Ichigo mumbled distractedly, mind hazy with pain, vision tunneling down to a pinhole. He was probably shaking, or convulsing, it was hard to tell, but all he could see where the miles of Grimmjow’s legs and the trail of Ichigo’s blood from his claws he made as he inched closer.

“ _Ichigo,_ ” Grimmjow stressed, and Ichigo would swear later that he felt a thrum of blue wash over him, unbearably gentle, like the lapping of a soft ocean wave, trying to pull him back to shore.

_“Come home. Come home and be free, free of him, free of them, free of it all. Kill him and come home.”_

No. No, no, _no._ Kill him? Kill _Grimmjow?_ Ichigo went cold to the very marrow of his bones at the command. That couldn’t be right, that couldn’t be the answer. He wouldn’t— he _couldn’t_. Not for anything. There was a yank at his soul, like something was trying to tear it from his body, and another bolt of blistering agony that struck him straight through.

Ichigo dropped his swords and his entire world whited out.

**~**

Grimmjow had killed plenty of things in his existence: Hollows and other Arrancars, Soul Reapers and humans. He’d seen the spectrum of the dying in their last moments, had heard enough death rattles and seen enough gaping wounds that he’d caused to know precisely when it was the end. Learned from each how to _make_ it end. A foot on a windpipe to stop the noise. Swing his sword a little harder, angle it just so, and then there wouldn’t be any sound, quiet, a painless end. He’d learned how to cause pain that way too. How to step hard enough to leave someone scrabbling to breathe, how to maim but not kill, inflict maximum but survivable damage. He’d seen it all, really.

Kurosaki with his sand-white skin and sky-black eye, horned and marked and oozing enough reiatsu to vaporize an army of Menos. That pale flesh rent open by Grimmjow’s own attack, the same meat and red blood inside as anyone else. Muscle that Grimmjow had shredded, the collarbone he’d snapped when Kurosaki had lurched away. Kneeling like he was in prayer, gaze glassy and unfocused, blood spattered face slack in astonishment.

Somehow, watching both of Kurosaki’s zanpakutos clatter to the dirt before his eyeballs rolled to the back of his skull until only the one white and the one black was showing back was something Grimmjow felt woefully unprepared for. And the way he crumpled completely to the earth without another sound, before Grimmjow could even get his body to respond, to _move,_ to catch him or something.

_That’s it. It’s done. I fuckin’ beat Kurosaki Ichigo. I’ve won._

How many times had he thought those four very sentences as he recovered after their battle in Hueco Mundo? How many times had he chanted it like a mantra, up until the Garganta paneled apart to reveal Kurosaki’s stunned face during the Blood War?

Grimmjow wasn’t thinking it now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Twitter acting a fool on the regular [here](https://mobile.twitter.com/sayhitoforeverr)  
> Join the GrimmIchi Discord [here!](https://discord.gg/u4TGnAkv)


	15. A Beautiful Place To Drown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know it's been a while. But thank you for all of your kudos and comments over the time since I last updated. They've inspired and validated me while I struggled to work on this chapter (and other projects, oops).
> 
> Thank you for your patience and I hope you enjoy! 🖤🖤

**~  
  
  
**

_“Give me blood and rage and  
a heart for horror; teach me to be  
tough enough to face this world  
still standing. Make a Fury of me.”_

Elizabeth Hewer, **from “Finding Ariadne” in** _Wishing for Birds_  
  


**~**

A battle had always moved just short of double time for Grimmjow. The heady combination of feral adrenalin and manic glee channeled through his predator heightened senses always made him feel like the rest of the world was moving too slowly. A second short, a moment too late, and Grimmjow was victorious. He was still alive for all those very reasons, still alive to revel in his bloodshed, to pick more fights. Time wasn’t even a factor; he’d never be constrained to the pithy bullshit of a set lifespan that humans were. Why slow down when you were nothing short of immortal? Grimmjow couldn’t even remember how old he was supposed to be anymore. It didn’t really matter.

But watching Kurosaki crumple soundlessly into the dirt was the closest approximation to an eternity that he had. The aggressive thump of his pulse in his throat, the roar of his own power just beneath his skin, they dulled nearly out of comprehension. Grimmjow was just standing there like an utter fucking moron, arms hanging uselessly at his sides as he stared at Kurosaki’s collapsed, utterly still body. And then he was kneeling beside it, hands descending to grab ahold of the Shinigami’s shoulders when he noticed just how the hell his hands looked now.

This wasn’t— these weren’t _his_ fucking hands. His claws had never been this long before, like god damn daggers, all ten of them. He couldn’t touch Kurosaki like this without doing more damage. He didn’t have time for a second eternity though because Kurosaki— Grimmjow wasn’t even sure he was _breathing._ That thought swept a cold rush through him, like a breeze up on a high dune, and in a blinding burst of shimmering blue, he was staring at his own two flesh hands again and Pantera was clattering to the dirt beside him. What the _fuck_ was even happening anymore?

“Oi, Kurosaki,” he snapped, reaching for the shoulder that hadn’t been reduced to mangled meat to turn his body over.

Kurosaki’s eyes were still rolled into the back of his head, black barely visible under fluttering lashes. Blood was spattered across his white cheek, splashed up his neck and the underside of his chin. And his chest, it was disgusting to look at, shredded and cracked open, vessels not yet clotted still spurting blood. He cradled Kurosaki’s limp body atop his legs, one arm over his abdomen to keep him from sliding back to the dirt, the other holding the back of his sweat-soaked head. Grimmjow leaned closer, dodging the wickedly sharp horn, into the potent, iron-heavy scent of Kurosaki’s blood and put his ear to bloodstained lips. No breath. He moved lower, wincing as he tweaked a protruding bone, to put his head against Kurosaki’s brutalized chest.

Over the thundering of his own pulse, all Grimmjow could hear was a trembling heartbeat, weak, slow, _failing_. He looked back up in stark disbelief, reaching with his other hand to grab ahold of one side of Kurosaki’s face. The tips of his fingers brushed the base of the horn growing out of the side of his skull and it shattered at his touch, dissolving away into particles finer than sand. The lines of black that tracked his face and down his neck dissipated next, like blood in water, until it was just white skin smeared with red.

The rest of the cratered landscape around him, even the whole spots where Kurosaki’s leaden, black reiryoku _burned_ like unnatural fire, faded to white noise. It was just Grimmjow’s own ragged breath, his skin crackling with the static of his own unfamiliar power, and Kurosaki’s terrifyingly quiet body. He didn’t think, _couldn’t think_ , clutching Kurosaki’s broken body to his chest _,_ he just _moved_. Faster than he’d been in a long time, since he was a different size, different body, different evolution.

A balancing act, holding onto Kurosaki and blasting the bunker hatch off with a barely controlled cero. One that burned even the tips of Grimmjow’s own fingers, something that had never happened before. He all but crashed into Kisuke’s stupidly squatty table, shooting up through the hole, turning his back to the room and skidding to a halt only when his lower back rammed into the table edge. Three flares of reiatsu pinged against Grimmjow’s pesquisa as he peeled Kurosaki away from his chest, wet and warm with blood now. All three of the flares turned into outright infernos in an instant.

“What happened?” Kisuke demanded in a hard voice.

“I didn’t do anything!” Grimmjow snarled defensively as he lowered Kurosaki’s body to the floor gently, legs feeling unsteady under both of their weight. Fuck, there was so much blood. On Kurosaki, on him now, hot and sticky and reeking. Grimmjow fumbled for a still-whitened wrist, knowing in theory how to feel for a pulse but never having had the urge to do so before.

“That’s not what I asked you. I asked you _what happened?_ ” There was a sharpness in the Shinigami’s voice that Grimmjow had never heard before, an edge that felt like the tip of a blade pressed against the back of his neck again. He dropped Kurosaki’s arm before he could find the beat he was looking for, trepidation surging to the surface.

“ _I don’t know!_ ” he roared, and tried not to let the extra unease from the answering spike in his own reiatsu get to him. Or the way Yoruichi’s hand curled into a fist at her side, whole arm going taut with muscle, or the steel-gleam in Kisuke’s grey eyes as he stepped away from Kurosaki’s prone body. He couldn’t be near him, shouldn’t be near him. “We were fighting, he blew my fucking arm off, and then—”

 _And then what?_ Grimmjow didn’t even know how the hell to explain what had happened. It was damn near a blur for him anyway. Just the jarring realization of a missing arm, the equally warm gush that followed, the scream of pain in every line of his body, and somewhere, distantly, the sound of Kurosaki’s hushed voice. What had he been saying? It had all been wiped blank in a rush of hot, blinding agony in the next second. What felt like an entire field of space between them as the haze of light cleared from Grimmjow’s vision to reveal Kurosaki on one knee, spewing blood from a wound that would have felled any other bastard. And then, Kurosaki crumpling to the dirt.

“He was muttering to himself, and then he just seized up and dropped like a stone,” Grimmjow continued, but it hardly seemed to matter.

Kisuke was staring at him, through him, and gone was every ounce of affable silliness, only the cold calculation of an old Shinigami remained. It sent an almost-shiver skittering down Grimmjow’s spine, to be regarded like something so hostile. Not during the pre-war preparations, not even during that final battle with the quincy fucker, had Kisuke looked at him like that before. All because of Kurosaki, all for Kurosaki.

For _Kurosaki,_ who had openly admitted to Grimmjow’s face that he didn’t trust the man currently standing over his dying body, one hand curled around the hilt of his sword held at waist level that he’d drawn enough that the metal glinted. And _that_ was a fuckin’ threat if Grimmjow had ever seen one before. Tessai rounded Kisuke, hands drenched in a sickly sort of green light, and Grimmjow bared his teeth in a snarl as the other Shinigami knelt down into the mess on the floor. But he paid no heed to Grimmjow, moving to hold his massive palms steady over Kurosaki’s ruined chest.

Yoruichi was next, and that was what drove the point home, drove Grimmjow to take half a step backward. The sly circle-talker who had done nothing but rile Grimmjow up since he’d torn his way into their shop. She positioned herself between Kurosaki’s body and Grimmjow, right leg forward, hips pivoted, tense and waiting, hazel gaze narrowed and dangerous. It was then, the sinking sensation feeling a whole hell of a lot like his meteor plummet back to the dunes, that Grimmjow realized he had left Pantera behind in the dirt next to Kurosaki’s swords. _Defenseless._ He was being treated as every inch the enemy he’d told Kurosaki he wanted to be.

“I wonder—” he heard Kisuke muse aloud before the man’s hand lashed out.

Grimmjow was so fuckin’ keyed up that he actually flinched at the sharp movement, momentarily perceiving it as an attack. Instead, the Shinigami plucked a ribbon of white out of the nothingness around them and stared down at it, disbelief visible on his tense face. White like bone, clean of any other marks or colors. All three of them turned to look at Grimmjow in tandem, eyes widening in simultaneous understanding. Tessai straightened from his bent vigil over Kurosaki’s body, looking briefly at the white ribbon, before his hand shot out next. Only the ribbon he plucked from the ether was as red as the blood Kurosaki’s body was still purging as though it was poison. Red with a singed strip of black through its very center. Kurosaki had said that only Hollows had white ribbons, had shown Grimmjow his own struck through with black. It registered for Grimmjow then and only then.

“Well _,_ ” Kisuke declared without missing a beat. “That seems to answer that.”

It still wasn’t fuckin’ right, Kurosaki’s body just lying there on the ground, tatami mats beneath him sucking up his blood like dry sponges. Neither was the way his collarbone was still jutting out of his chest like he’d been harpooned. Whatever Tessai was attempting, it didn’t seem to be working. Nothing was changing, the wound wasn’t healing, the blood was still flowing. And Grimmjow was always prepared for the worst, always anticipated the shittiest possibilities, but Kurosaki was a surprise that kept on giving.

A hiss like that of venting steam sounded and the four of them watched in silent, abject horror as a spot of black bloomed across Kurosaki’s skin, in the center of his sternum. Spreading like an ink blot, the spot grew to the size of a clenched fist and held it’s shape, so dark it looked like it had been burned there. And then it began to smoke, a black brume rising and curling into the air, too much like Grimmjow’s own Hollow hole the other week. Tessai leaned back as Kisuke did, both sets of eyes going wide.

“Don’t like that,” Yoruichi commented darkly before letting out a startled yelp, flinching back in tandem with Grimmjow as Kurosaki’s chest heaved in a rattling, wheezing breath.

A spasming tremor seemed to wrack Kurosaki’s battered body as his eyes shot open, both of them black now, both of them rolling to the back of his skull, a mere flash of gold. Two wavering lines crept out from the blackened spot on Kurosaki’s chest, inching up his neck like streaks of soot. And Grimmjow could have sworn that the room was washed over in static for a moment, unbearable, unbreathable, an absolutely crushing weight, as those black lines stretched all the way up to Kurosaki’s jawline. They went no further, and the strange static melted away, only to give rise to a truly fucked up squelching noise as white erupted and bubbled in Kurosaki’s chest wound. The sound of it actually made Grimmjow’s stomach turn as a vapor smelling _precisely_ like burnt flesh rose from Kurosaki’s skin as it knit itself back together rapidly.

All four of them seemed to look on in disbelief as the wound closed up in mere moments, leaving behind no evidence of Grimmjow’s accidental handiwork. The black spot remained, the lines stayed put, and Kurosaki didn’t wake. Just four assholes standing over the universe’s Golden Boy like they were conducting some kind of death ritual.

Yoruichi didn’t stop him as Grimmjow stepped past her, dropping to one knee, fumbling for a white wrist again. It took him an awful, silent minute to find the beat at the edge of all those delicate wrist bones, but it was there. Slow, but steadier. She didn’t stop him as Grimmjow put his hand flat against the black hole in the center of Kurosaki’s sternum. Nothing happened, but it was scorching to the touch, hot even to his hierro. Just soft skin, healed over, skin that dented gently when he pressed his blunt fingertips into it, almost able to feel the dull thump. But when he pulled his hand away and put his ear to hot skin again, to be sure, _he had to be sure,_ Yoruichi made a sound in the back of her throat, something stifled and surprised.

_Alive._

But the black hole painted just beneath his now healed collarbones was not fading, nor was the white hue of his merged form melting back to his normal, warm tan. No longer convulsing either, but as Grimmjow pried one of his eyes open in curiosity, they were still very much blackened. Grimmjow looked up at Tessai who was still kneeling on the other side of Kurosaki, and the bespectacled former Shinigami stared back. Alive, but not awake. Alive, but not purely Shinigami, not Kurosaki the way he always was. Alive, _but at what cost?_

“ _Fix him,_ ” Grimmjow hissed, leveling Kisuke with a look full up of a wild sort of wrath. An anxious sort of rage he’d never felt before. Defenseless, and guilty by association, and _baffled_.

He was still staring down with the same narrowed, calculating gaze of grey as before. “What did he say?” Kisuke asked, voice almost monotone, sharp and flat in its clinicality. “You said he was talking to himself. What did he say?”

Grimmjow’s hand shot out without his consent, grabbing a fistful of fabric at Kisuke’s collar and giving the Shinigami a violent shake. “The ribbon, _my ribbon,_ it’s not black anymore. It’s in Kurosaki’s now, _why?_ ”

Kisuke’s eyes went a little wide at that, white’s flashing, but Grimmjow was too enraged to give a shit that he’d all but ratted Kurosaki out. It was supposed to be a secret that he knew that, Kurosaki had told him in confidence. It didn’t matter if the stupid asshole didn’t live long enough for that knowledge to make a difference though. Grimmjow would weather that punishment if and when it came.

“I don’t know,” he said simply, gaze hiding nothing discernable.

“That’s not good enough!” Grimmjow snarled, and checked the urge to stick a cero-primed hand down his throat and turn him into a torch.

“We have healed the physical injuries that Kurosaki-san has sustained, but the psychological ones are up to him,” Tessai spoke from the floor, and Grimmjow allowed himself a fraction of a second to look down to see the lurid green enveloping his hands once more as they roamed over Kurosaki’s motionless body as though they were looking for unseen wounds.

_Psychological?_

“The fuck they are! This is bullshit, even for you assholes. You really expect me to believe that Kurosaki’s just having himself a little, traumatic cat nap? _Fuck you,_ ” Grimmjow spat and released Kisuke with a shove. The Shinigami only swayed on his feet as Grimmjow was the one to take a step back, careful not to accidentally step on the asshole of the hour. “Now, fix him. Call his ginger friend, _do something._ ”

Grimmjow looked over to Yoruichi who’d been nothing but silent since he’d crash-landed upstairs, uncharacteristically so. She regarded him plainly for a moment, so openly that Grimmjow wanted to recoil. Like she knew something she wasn’t supposed, as if Grimmjow had given something away. He felt exposed without knowing why.

“I’m afraid that we’ve all fought our fights, and now it’s up to Ichigo to fight his own.”

**~**

Ichigo could feel the waves as they washed over him in lulling, soporific patterns. He was spread eagle beneath the crashing roll of the current, the hypnotic sway of the light through the water shone red through his closed eyes and he could feel his hair floating in a halo about his head. It was nearly relaxing for a moment, just the gentle rock of getting pulled to and fro by the waves, the dappled sunlight.

But he was drowning. Slipping, suffocating, sinking down, down, down. Ichigo was drowning and all of him was burning. As if he’d swallowed the sun, the very marrow of his bones smoldering like embering charcoal. A vicious wave bore down on him, slamming down on his battered body and driving him further into the unknown depths. Cold, he was cold. Cold and burning and breathing in water, body screaming, throat aching. A body ache like a bad fever.

 _“Can you hear me?”_ warbled a voice and Ichigo frowned at the way it seemed to come from nowhere in particular. “ _Shit ain’t right, King. You gotta shake this off.”_

His chest throbbed, the desperate ache for air, but all he got as he sucked in a breath was lungfuls of boiling water. Agony lanced through him, wickedly hot, and Ichigo reached out, arm weak, a burn in his muscles like he’d spent all day hauling shit around the clinic, reaching for anything that would stabilize him somehow. It was jarring, the something that suddenly grabbed ahold of his hand and bodily jerked him through the water.

A brief free fall, terrifying and disorienting as only his sense of equilibrium registered the drop. He hit pavement on all fours, knees cracking against the ground, pain zinging up his palms as his elbows damn near hyperextended from the force of bracing himself. He gasped in air like a newborn, sucking in grateful gulps. A full-blown anxiety attack knocked at his ribs as he waited for the black to clear from his vision. Slowly, the first sight to filter back in was the cratered pavement beneath him. Ichigo managed to sit back on his heels, head spinning like he’d just been punched, before staggering to his feet as the last of the color finally came through.

The main street of his inner world looked like it had been _bombed._ There wasn’t a building left that hadn’t been devastated to some degree, whole levels of them cleared away as if they’d never been there, cracked remnants of once proud structures. The usually pristine road that meandered through his inner city was covered in white _sand_. As if a sandstorm had swept through, it was blown everywhere, piled and sloping in the beginnings of dunes. And way in the distance, the bit of the horizon he could see between shattered skyscrapers, the sky looked far darker than it ever had before. Moving closer from that dark sky was a smear of white, the outline of which grew sharper as Ichigo’s sight focused a little more.

“White?” Ichigo questioned, reaching up to rub his burning eyes. The boiling water he’d been floating in was gone. The air was so dry, stiflingly hot too, but that became the least of his worries when he caught sight of his own pale hands.

 _“Can you hear me?”_ White repeated. But the anxiety that had been simply knocking was pounding away now and Ichigo flipped his palms up and down. He’d never, not a single time in his relatively short Shinigami life, not even after all the practice of merging forms, looked like this while _within_ his inner world.

Ichigo looked down at himself and balked at his white arms, patting them up, up, up, to his white chest and lost it at the sight of the black circle smeared between the parted folds of his shihakusho.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, pawing at the mark that was decidedly not a proper Hollow hole, not yet, but it certainly wasn’t rubbing away either. He scratched hard enough to force the skin to welt up angrily, but it did nothing. Ichigo looked up in alarm at White who’d stopped a mere yard away. “Cut the shit.”

 _“I’m not doing that,”_ White said with gritted teeth. Ichigo stopped, hands still pressed to the mark on his skin, and took in the tight set of White’s jaw, the tension in every line of him. He looked like a piano cord strung to its tautest, both hands curled into fists at his sides, knuckles pressed sharply against equally pale skin. He looked like he was in _pain._

“Wh-what’s wrong with you? The hell is going on?” Ichigo stammered out, drawing his hands from the mark on his skin to stare down at his pale palms again. “Why do I still look like you?”

_“I don’t know. My control is slipping.”_

“Your control?” Ichigo asked, incredulous, grappling for an explanation, for reasoning. He could think of none, head beginning to reel. “But… we’re cool now, balanced and everything.”

 _“I’m losing control of **me** ,”_ White huffed out and a trickle of dread slithered through Ichigo’s veins at the desperation threaded in that confession. _“We’re all channels, remember? Something is opening them. All of them.”_

It settled in his guts as though he’d swallowed a brick, the realization of just how truly and utterly _fucked_ he was. The painted mark was exactly where Ichigo’s Hollow hole was supposed to be, punched straight through his undying chest. The hole that had only appeared a few times over the years, in Vizard training, while fighting Ulquoirra, and in Hell. All three instances that had one common denominator: Ichigo having lost complete control over himself and his power.

“Sh-she told us to kill him, to kill Grimmjow,” he realized aloud, going cold all over. He scanned the horizon, eyes flitting to every alley between the skyscrapers as though whoever it was would come right out. Her voice wasn’t lingering like it had after Grimmjow had skewered him. It was just him and White and the howl of the wind through decimated buildings.

Ichigo took a step forward, and White took a step back, putting a hand out as if he intended to shove Ichigo away if he got too close. He saw it then, the usually kempt, black-painted fingernails of White were now the black claws of the form he just couldn’t seem to outrun. He stared at them, and slowly lifted his gaze to White’s inverted eyes. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, logic, reasoning, _words_ lodged in his throat. They were in so much shit.

 _“Don’t listen to that bitch, whoever she is. Don’t trust a damn thing she says,”_ White snarled, and while his conviction and instinct had always been the enviable point of contention between them, this declaration felt different somehow. It felt more, like it meant more. _“It’s not furball’s fault. He was just the carrier.”_

“So, he really is a harbinger,” Ichigo bemoaned, and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. The image of Grimmjow’s white hair and glowing crown of bone seemed to be seared into the back of his eyelids. Prophet wasn’t exactly another personal descriptor he wanted to put on his supernatural resume, but it was hard to deny for this situation.

 _“He’s an unwitting errand boy. But you gotta get to Hueco Mundo, now,”_ White insisted, and there was no mistaking the urgency in his grating voice. _“Whatever this is, it ain’t right.”_

“But, my barrier—”

 _“Fuck the barrier!”_ he bellowed, eyes going to the unhinged sort of wide that Ichigo had grown unused to seeing. He’d mellowed out so much since they’d come to terms with each other, had actually made a point to work as one instead of butting heads all the time. _“It’s not gonna hold us, not us together like this, especially cast by anyone other than that bald Squad Zero monk.”_

The hell, bald? Ichigo shook his head. “If we get to Hueco Mundo, and I don’t have a barrier, it’ll be _war_. Those stupid world dividers will alert Soul Society.”

 _“Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe you assholes will need them when you meet whoever is managing to do this.”_ White held up his hands between them, with the tendons standing at attention as he restrained himself, black claws still the glaring anomaly. “ _Now, go find who fuckin’ sent him and kick their ass.”_

Ichigo opened his mouth again, to protest, to assert himself. This wasn’t a plan, it was hardly _anything_. They already had one and whatever was happening was blowing it all to shit. But White pushed him then, both hands on his chest, and sent him sliding back. Ichigo reached to his back for his sword to protect himself, not liking where this was headed, and panicked when the grip wasn’t immediately within reach. He tried for his waist as White stalked forward, but there was no sword there either. He opened his mouth to yell, but White shoved him a second time. But it didn’t send him back again, it sent him _over._ Over an edge he hadn’t seen, and he plummeted.

Ichigo gasped in a shallow breath as he came to, arms shooting out to catch himself on instinct and grabbing fistfuls of soft fabric. His eyes flew open and fixed on the all too familiar ceiling of the upstairs guest room in the shoten shop just above him. It was barely discernable from the last of the afternoon sunlight coming through the poorly closed drapes of the window. He sat up and something slid down from his chest, and he shivered a little at the rush of cold air as it hit his bare skin. Someone had stripped his shihakusho down to his waist and tied it off. Instinctively, he lifted a hand to his chest and looked down. The painted approximation of his Hollow hole still remained, and he ran his fingers over it, grimacing at how unnaturally hot to the touch it was. He inspected his hands next, but the white of his merged form had dissipated, leaving behind his usual skin. No claws and no horn to be found as he patted at his head, and there was no mirror in the room from him to see what his eyes might look like.

Racking his brain, he couldn’t come up with an answer for how he’d gotten upstairs again. The last he could remember was kneeling in the dirt in the boonies of the bunker, Grimmjow stalking towards him, collarbone sticking out of him like a bad prank. He looked down at his chest again, but other than the black spot, there was no evidence that Grimmjow had even clawed him open. And the house was eerily quiet, which never bode well. Beside him, still lain out and tucked in, was his human body, undisturbed. Ichigo breathed out a short sigh of relief, squeezed his eyes shut real tight for a moment and counted to ten. His heart was pounding away in his chest, panic, but sitting there probably wasn’t going to do any good.

“ _Oi,_ hold on a sec—” came Grimmjow’s voice from somewhere within the room as Ichigo reached for his body.

He startled at the sound of it, having felt no other reiatsu in the room as he woke. Ichigo whipped his head around to find Grimmjow rising from a chair pushed up against the wall beside the door and crossing the room in a few strides. He crouched down in front of Ichigo, the window light hitting his sharp blue eyes, and tired, pale face. He was shimmering again, the same pale pearlescence of his barrier. Only this one seemed brighter, more opaque even, as if it was stronger, thicker. Grimmjow assessed only his face with a narrowed, glittering gaze, before dropping down to stare at Ichigo’s bare chest. At the black hole there.

It took a hot, embarrassing second for Ichigo to flush until his face burned and he scrabbled for the blanket he’d shoved off, drawing it up to cover himself.

“Stop looking at my _hole_. It’s indecent, have some shame,” he blurted without thinking.

A sound that was more animal than arrancar rumbled in Grimmjow’s chest and one hand lashed out to yank the blanket away from his chest, while the other pressed against his skin, palm flat. It was like war flashbacks of the other night and Ichigo’s face felt like it was a million degrees as Grimmjow seemed to pat him down. He grabbed ahold of Grimmjow’s wrist and pried it away from his chest and held it tight as Grimmjow resisted, glaring at him with pinprick pupils and a curled lip.

“You _bastard_ ,” he growled and Ichigo stared at him wildly, confused. “You melodramatic asshole. I could kill you right now, I really fuckin’ could.”

“The hell—” Ichigo started to say but Grimmjow wrenched his wrist away sharply, one hand reaching out to grab the back of Ichigo’s head and the other going straight for his left eye.

Ichigo panicked, he really did, assuming Grimmjow was just going to crush his skull between both his hands as recompense for whatever wrong he was upset about now. Instead, Grimmjow held his left eye open stupidly wide and he leaned in to stare at it. They were practically nose to nose and Ichigo held his breath as Grimmjow searched for whatever he was looking for. Whether or not he found it, it was hard to tell, because he moved then, releasing Ichigo’s eye but keeping ahold of his head. Grimmjow leaned in even further until his hair tickled Ichigo’s cheek and his nose was pressed to the skin of his neck, just beneath Ichigo’s right ear, and inhaled. Every bulb in Ichigo’s brain shorted out in an instant and he stared dumbfoundedly into the dark room. But Grimmjow pulled back a fraction of an inch to glare fully at Ichigo again not a moment later.

“You’ve got some explaining to do, Kurosaki. What did you do to me?” Grimmjow demanded harshly, ridiculously large hand still holding the back of Ichigo’s head, fingers curled through his pillow-flattened hair a little to keep him right there.

Ichigo just looked blankly at him from the distance of three inches. “The hell are you talking about?”

“The hell did you do to me, huh? Kisuke’s calling it _segunda etapa_ , like I’m supposed to know what the fuck that is,” he whisper-snarled and Ichigo blinked, so lost it was almost hilarious.

“Seg— what? _I_ don’t even know what that is!”

“You—” The distinct sound of crackling echoed in the room and Grimmjow let go of his face just in time for him to lean back and watch the barrier enshrouding him dissolve into nothing but glitter as fine as fresh snow. Grimmjow’s skin steamed for a second as the air hit it and he frowned down at his forearms.

“Damn it, again?!”

Ichigo had both of his hands up as if he was about to fend off some sparkles and blinked as they disappeared entirely before looking at Grimmjow. “What in the hell is even going on?” He squinted at Grimmjow’s unprotected forearms now and frowned. He could have sworn he’d just seen blue light right under the surface of his pale skin. “Are you… glowing?”

The face Grimmjow turned on him, lip curled back, brows arched in a look of disbelief, as if Ichigo was the stupidest person he’d ever met, was one he’d never forget. He held Ichigo’s gaze for a moment before looking pointedly down at the black mark on Ichigo’s chest and Ichigo grappled for the blankets again. “Don’t look at it! Stop making it weird.”

“ _Oh_ , it’s already weird, Kurosaki,” he sneered, leaning in too close again, and Ichigo could _feel_ the heat emanating off of his still faintly steaming skin. “But maybe I like you like this.”

Ichigo blanched, something in chest cartwheeling up into his throat, and the last thing he saw was the expanse of Grimmjow’s palm as he put it flat to Ichigo’s face and shoved him harshly down to the floor. His head bounced against the ground, a spray of silver static erupting in his vision as he winced, but Grimmjow was already standing up and heading for the door as he managed to sit up again, rubbing at the back of his skull.

“Get dressed and come tell everyone why you’re turning into a Hollow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on Twitter acting a fool on the regular [here](https://mobile.twitter.com/sayhitoforeverr)  
> Join the GrimmIchi Discord [here!](https://discord.gg/u4TGnAkv)


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